Vietnam seeks dissident's return
This week, a South Korean court is to decide the fate of a Vietnamese anti-communist, branded a terrorist by the Vietnamese government.
Depending on whether it decides he is a democratic activist or a terrorist, a domestic court will decide whether to extradite Chanh Huu Nguyen to his home country at a hearing this week.
Nguyen, 55, who spearheads Government of Free Vietnam (GFVN), has been detained in Seoul since April.
He is being held at the request of the Vietnamese government, which wants him extradited so that he can be tried for terrorist acts. The Vietnamese government claims that he attempted to bomb Vietnamese embassies in the Philippines and Thailand.
However, a spokesman for Nguyen strongly opposes his extradition claiming that he is an anti-communist with a noble cause. According to the spokesman, Nguyen was in Seoul for the non-profit U.S. International Mission to seek donations from businessmen to build orphanages on Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands for children forced into sexual slavery.
Nguyen, a former construction engineer, sought asylum in the United States in 1981 to protest the communist regime of Vietnam and established GFVN in Los Angeles. He was voted to hold the position of Secretary of State.
Since then he has been leading various activities protesting against the communist regime of Vietnam. While the Vietnamese government see him as a terrorist, many Vietnamese residents in the United States and world leaders see him as a freedom fighter.
The Vietnamese government has urged the South Korean government to extradite him. In May, a month after Nguyen was detained in a hotel here, the Vietnamese president sent a personal letter to Chong Wa Dae calling for his extradition.
On July 13, at the third hearing on Nguyen's extradition, the embassy bombing investigative director, sent by the Vietnamese government, stood as a witness. Participation of foreign witness in a hearing for extradition is seen as very unusual. The Vietnamese government previously demanded that the Korean court allow the participation of four Vietnamese inspectors to counter the lawyer's claim that inspection records for Nguyen on the bombings were manipulated. The court decided to allow only one of the four to stand as a witness. In the audience, there were about 20 Vietnamese nationals, including Ngyuen's family and Vietnamese government officials.
Experts say that besides the truth of the claim that Nguyen bombed embassies, elements such as diplomatic and economic relations could be factors in the court's decision, which is due in this week.
Since 1990s, after setting a pact over extradition of criminals, South Korea has asked Vietnam to extradite 10 South Koreans from that country. The Vietnamese government turned down none of them.
It is the first time that Vietnam has requested a criminal extradition from South Korea and Nguyen's case is likely to have significant influence over future bilateral cooperation over criminals. Also, if South Korea fails to fulfill Vietnam's request, trade relations between the two countries could suffer.
However, if Nguyen is a real freedom fighter, according to lawyer, extraditing him to Vietnam could spark a great backlash from democratic activists abroad. For months, they have rallied in the streets outside the South Korean consulate in Los Angeles, pleading for the release of an anticommunist leader they insist has wrongly been branded a terrorist.
By Park Chung-a - The Korea Times - July 24, 2006
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