Anti-communist who hijacked planes over Vietnam says age is grounding him
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Vietnamese government calls anti-communist activist Ly Tong a terrorist, and Cuba says he's a madman.
Now 60, the South Vietnamese air force veteran, with a penchant for highjacking planes to spread his political message, says that five years in a Thai prison have not dulled his determination.
Tong testified Monday in Bangkok Criminal Court at a hearing to determine whether he should be extradited to Vietnam for dropping 50,000 leaflets over Ho Chi Minh city urging people on Nov. 17, 2000 to rebel against Vietnam's communist government.
His stunt occurred during a visit to Vietnam by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Tong was arrested after landing back in Thailand and later sentenced to prison for violating Thai airspace.
The government in Hanoi wants to try him for endangering national security by violating its airspace, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The Thai court is expected to issue its judgment Sept. 7.
Refugee-turned-U.S. citizen Tong said that if he walks free, he "will continue to fight for the freedom and democracy of my country -- but maybe by other measures."
"I'm a little bit old now. You need to have the strength to fly a plane," he told The Associated Press.
It's hard to believe that the flamboyant flyer is ready to put his wings on the shelf.
Tong's audacious, self-appointed missions make him a folk hero among parts of the overseas Vietnamese community as well as in die-hard anti-Communists circles. It probably doesn't hurt that there's a touch of the rogue about him -- he claims to have sired daughters out of wedlock by women of three different countries.
Twice he has hijacked planes from Thailand to drop leaflets over Vietnam, and when he lived in Florida, he carried out a similar caper over Cuba. Hanoi has described him as a "dangerous international terrorist," and Havana as a "madman, unhinged, drugged, or vulgar mercenary."
He looks remarkably fit for a man of his age, with the kind of lean build found on former military men who have the discipline to stay in shape.
On his left forearm he sports a butterfly tattoo, which he said signifies freedom. He said the tattoo was inspired by a Frenchman, Henri Charierre, whose escape from the notorious French penal colony at Devil's Island in French Guiana was immortalized in the book and movie "Papillon," which is French for "butterfly."
In court, he insisted that his leaflet-dropping flight was political, not criminal, and said it was against Thai law to extradite a person to face trial on political charges.
"I went there to save my country, not harm my country. When I dropped the leaflets in Vietnam, I harmed the Communist Party," he told the court.
He claims to 1 million supporters around the world, saying some have appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush to intervene and help secure his release.
Tong has the nickname "Black Eagle," after the fighter squadron in which he once served. In the closing months of the Vietnam War in 1975, he was shot down while piloting an A-37 Dragonfly attack plane for the South Vietnamese Air Force, and taken prisoner by the communists.
Like many former officers of the South Vietnamese military, he was held under harsh conditions in what was called a "reeducation camp," but managed to escape after five years.
He trekked through jungles, traveling more than 2,500 kilometers across Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia, then swimming across the Johor Strait to Singapore, where he applied for and was granted asylum in the United States.
Settling in the U.S. in 1984, he studied political science at the University of New Orleans, and became a Florida resident. But he was restless.
"After the collapse of Communism, I thought it was a good idea for me to go back to Vietnam to show my solidarity," he said, describing the Hanoi government as "undemocratic."
Tong hijacked a Vietnam Airlines flight over Vietnam in 1992 by claiming to have a bomb, and forced the crew to fly over Ho Chi Minh City, where he dumped tens of thousands of leaflets before parachuting into the former South Vietnamese capital in hopes of leading an uprising. Instead, he was captured and jailed for six years.
In January 2000, he rented a plane in Miami and flew over Havana, showering the Cuban capital with leaflets calling for the ouster of "the old dinosaur Fidel Castro."
After he returned to the U.S., aviation authorities suspended his pilot license, but didn't prosecute him. It was a virtual test run for the flight that earned him hard time in Thailand, and now puts him at risk of being turned over to his enemies in Hanoi.
As he relaxed Monday in prison garb and shackles outside court, he admitted to one regret -- that he would not be carrying out similar missions over China and North Korea, two of the last bulwarks of the tottering Communist world.
The Associated Press - August 9, 2006.
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