Vietnamese journalist, dissident freed during amnesty HANOI - A Vietnamese journalist who spent five years in jail for advocating human rights was released as part of last month's presidential amnesty for more than 12,000 inmates, a Paris-based media advocacy group said Thursday. Nguyen Ngoc Tan, 80, who went by his pen name Pham Thai, had been an activist in the Movement for the Unity of the People and Construction of Democracy, Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. He had pushed for press freedoms as a member of the underground group that advocated human rights and democracy in Vietnam. Tan was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for "conspiring against the socialist power." He was released April 30 from Ham Tan labor camp on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. Reporters Without Borders welcomed Tan's release, saying it "regrets it did not come sooner." Tan, who is suffering from diabetes, rheumatism and lung infections, has returned to Ho Chi Minh City. His colleague, Nguyen Dinh Huy, remains as the last journalist jailed in the country, the group said. Last month, Vietnam pardoned 12,264 inmates in its largest amnesty ever to mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Government officials have declined to say whether any of those released are people identified by human rights groups as political or religious dissidents. Vietnam has repeatedly said no one is in its jails for dissident views, only lawbreakers. Human rights groups have estimated that Vietnam holds at least 40 prisoners of conscience. Associated Press - May 11, 2000.