Vietnam Convicts US Citizens On Terrorism Charges, Will Deport Them
DPA
A Vietnamese court Friday sentenced three naturalized US citizens to 15 months in prison after convicting them of terrorism for a plot to override state radio airwaves and broadcast calls for an uprising against the communist government.
The three are to be deported as early as next month under the sentence, which dates the start of their prison terms back to the time they were arrested in September 2005. Their Vietnamese co-defendants also would be released but kept under house arrest.
Vietnamese-born Thuong Nguyen "Cuc" Foshee and Le Van Binh, both of Florida, and Huynh Bich "Linda" Lien of California, had been held without charge for more than a year and were put on trial Friday after intense pressure from the US government.
US Senator Mel Martinez, of Florida, has been threatening to hold up a key trade bill with Vietnam over the case. The three were accused of bringing 14 radio transmitters and five generators into Vietnam in early 2005, allegedly planning to electronically seize control of the Voice of Vietnam Radio and call for an uprising against the government.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court convicted them in a one-day trial in which all the defendants pleaded guilty, according to the court's chief judge, Nguyen Duc Sau, who was present at the trial but did not preside over it.
"The verdict is appropriate. They were convicted of terrorism," Sau said Friday. "These defendants were tricked into doing what they did. In general, they are backward people."
Under Vietnamese law, terrorism carries a penalty of 12 years imprisonment to the death penalty, but Sau said the sentences were lighter under a separate law allowing court discretion to give reduced sentences based on the severity of the crime and the defendants' degree of involvement.
The relatively lenient sentences could clear the way for lifting of Florida senator Martinez's opposition to granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations to Vietnam, which is necessary for the country to apply the privileges of its upcoming entry into World Trade Organization in the US.
Vietnam's government has accused the seven of connections with Nguyen Huu Chanh, Vietnam's most-wanted terrorist suspect, who lives in exile in the US state of California.
Hanoi has been urging the US for years to arrest and extradite Chanh, the former leader of the Government of Free Vietnam, which has been linked to attacks on Vietnamese embassies abroad and its members convicted of a 2000 plot to blow up national monuments including a statue of the country's founder Ho Chi Minh.
The Free Vietnam movement is also accused of being behind a fire in Vietnam's embassy in London in 2000, a bomb blast that injured a guard at the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia in 2001, a failed bomb attack at the embassy in Thailand and another plot against an embassy in the Philippines.
US authorities have declined to arrest Chanh, who renounced violence in 2001 after years of publically bragging of his anti-communist bombing plots. Chanh was arrested earlier this year in South Korea on a request from Hanoi, but a Seoul court later declined to extradite him to Vietnam and freed him.
The three are to be deported as early as next month under the sentence, which dates the start of their prison terms back to the time they were arrested in September 2005. Their Vietnamese co-defendants also would be released but kept under house arrest.
Vietnamese-born Thuong Nguyen "Cuc" Foshee and Le Van Binh, both of Florida, and Huynh Bich "Linda" Lien of California, had been held without charge for more than a year and were put on trial Friday after intense pressure from the US government.
US Senator Mel Martinez, of Florida, has been threatening to hold up a key trade bill with Vietnam over the case. The three were accused of bringing 14 radio transmitters and five generators into Vietnam in early 2005, allegedly planning to electronically seize control of the Voice of Vietnam Radio and call for an uprising against the government.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Court convicted them in a one-day trial in which all the defendants pleaded guilty, according to the court's chief judge, Nguyen Duc Sau, who was present at the trial but did not preside over it.
"The verdict is appropriate. They were convicted of terrorism," Sau said Friday. "These defendants were tricked into doing what they did. In general, they are backward people."
Under Vietnamese law, terrorism carries a penalty of 12 years imprisonment to the death penalty, but Sau said the sentences were lighter under a separate law allowing court discretion to give reduced sentences based on the severity of the crime and the defendants' degree of involvement.
The relatively lenient sentences could clear the way for lifting of Florida senator Martinez's opposition to granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations to Vietnam, which is necessary for the country to apply the privileges of its upcoming entry into World Trade Organization in the US.
Vietnam's government has accused the seven of connections with Nguyen Huu Chanh, Vietnam's most-wanted terrorist suspect, who lives in exile in the US state of California.
Hanoi has been urging the US for years to arrest and extradite Chanh, the former leader of the Government of Free Vietnam, which has been linked to attacks on Vietnamese embassies abroad and its members convicted of a 2000 plot to blow up national monuments including a statue of the country's founder Ho Chi Minh.
The Free Vietnam movement is also accused of being behind a fire in Vietnam's embassy in London in 2000, a bomb blast that injured a guard at the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia in 2001, a failed bomb attack at the embassy in Thailand and another plot against an embassy in the Philippines.
US authorities have declined to arrest Chanh, who renounced violence in 2001 after years of publically bragging of his anti-communist bombing plots. Chanh was arrested earlier this year in South Korea on a request from Hanoi, but a Seoul court later declined to extradite him to Vietnam and freed him.
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