Killer of war photographer punished
HANOI - A former official was sentenced to 12 years for killing a well-known Vietnam
War photographer in an argument over nude photos of the official's fiancee, a court official said
Thursday.
In a two-day trial, Vu Truong Giang, 28, a former employee of the Ministry of Planning and
Investment, was found guilty of killing Nguyen Trong Thanh, 58, the official said.
Investigators said Giang and his fiancee, Vu Tra My, 27, came to Thanh's office last November and
demanded that he return the nude photos he had taken of My. Thanh and My had ended a five-year
romantic relationship in 1998.
Thanh refused, the two men began arguing and Giang strangled the photographer, the investigators
said. My was not charged by police.
Thanh was one of North Vietnam's most famed photographers during the Vietnam War. He spent five
years working along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the legendary network of dirt paths through jungles on
which Communist guerrillas ferried weapons and troops to the south.
Thanh would carry three cameras, 400 rolls of film and processing chemicals, and stored his negatives
in a pouch that he wore like a belt even when he slept.
``The Americans sometimes bombed 24 hours a day. You never knew when you would have to run
away. Many photographers lost their film and cameras this way,'' Thanh told The Associated Press in
an interview in April last year.
Thanh published two books of war photos, one in the United States and the other in Japan.
The Associated Press - September 20, 2001.
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