Internet love triangle leads to murder plot in Vietnam
HANOI - A Vietnamese man rejected by a woman he met in an Internet chat room
hired two hitmen to kill his rival, whom the woman also met in
cyberspace, state media reported Monday.
Tran Hong Giang, 27, was arrested Thursday and charged with conspiracy
to murder, according to the daily Cong An Nhan dan (People's Police)
newspaper. The arrest came after two men attacked Nguyen Hai Dang, 23,
with knives as he was talking to his fiancee in Hanoi. Dang was
hospitalized with deep slashes to his face, arms and torso.
Both men had developed a relationship on the Internet with a young
woman from the southcentral province of Binh Thuan, the newspaper
said, adding Giang occasionally travelled to Hanoi, and would meet
with both.
"The woman is very beautiful, and both men fell in love with her," the
newspaper said.
Earlier in August, the woman accepted a job in Hanoi and both men
proposed to her. She chose Dang.
An enraged Giang asked a friend to help him get revenge, and the two
hired hitmen who carried out the botched attack on Dang on August 12.
Giang, who works for the Asian Institute of Technology, was arrested
three days later. The hitmen are still at large.
At least 70 per cent of Internet users under 25 primarily use it for
chatting and meeting new people, according to a recent government
survey.
Communist Vietnam's state-run press has been calling for stricter
control of the Internet because of pornography and
"counter-revolutionary" information on some sites. The government
already has a firewall that blocks dozens of sites featuring
pornography or criticism of the government.
Deutsche Presse Agentur - August 19, 2002.
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