Vietnam court sentences 11 to death in drug trial HANOI - Communist Vietnam sentenced 11 people to death by firing squad after they were convicted on Monday of heroin and opium trafficking in the country's biggest ever drugs trial. The court in Nam Dinh City, about 80 km (50 miles) south of Hanoi, sentenced nine other defendants to life imprisonment and two to 18 to 20-year terms. Among those sentenced to death was Nguyen Van Tam, identified as the leader of the trafficking ring, who confessed during the trial to trafficking in heroin since the early 1990s. Tam was one of 22 defendants who stood trial for trafficking 263 kg (579 lb) of heroin and 289 kg of opium from Laos into Vietnam. All the defendants were convicted. They have 15 days to lodge appeals but the chances of escaping the death sentence are slim, given that Vietnam takes a hardline in drugs cases. The trial, which lasted two weeks, came amid a big crackdown on illegal drugs by the communist authorities. Trafficking 100 grams (3.3 ounces) or more of heroin is punishable by death or life imprisonment in Vietnam. Police said they uncovered the smuggling operation when they found two packs of heroin hidden in an eight-year-old girl's backpack in Nam Dinh in October 1998. Even at Vietnamese wholesale street prices, the amount of heroin involved was worth up to $5 million, a huge sum in a country with an annual average per capital income of about $370. According to U.N. estimates, heroin wholesales at $15,000 to $19,000 a kg in Vietnam's capital Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh City, the main town in the south of the country. Vietnam has been identified by anti-drug agencies as an important trafficking route from the Golden Triangle opium-growing region which covers parts of Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and southwestern China. Heroin is derived from opium. Reuters - June 26, 2000.