Vang Pao refused bail, held in jail

Sacramento, California (Agencies) - Hundreds of supporters demonstrated outside a federal courthouse Monday as a magistrate refused to release Hmong leader and ex-general Vang Pao on bail while he awaits trial on charges of trying to overthrow the communist government of Laos.

Despite his age and deteriorating health, Vang Pao, 77, is too dangerous and too great a flight risk to be freed under any circumstances, US Magistrate Judge Edmund Brennan ruled after a 30-minute hearing.

Vang Pao and eight other Hmong elders were arrested June 4 on charges that they tried to buy nearly $10 million worth of military weapons and recruit mercenaries to unseat Laos's communist government.

A 10th defendant, retired California National Guard Lt. Col. Harrison Jack, is also charged, accused of trying to arrange the coup through an arms broker who turned out to be an undercover federal agent.

Hmong from across California and several other states packed the courtroom and filled a courthouse plaza and surrounding sidewalks for Vang Pao's detention hearing. Court security officials estimated that 500 to 1,000 Hmong showed up.

Most of the Hmong were dressed in white to show their peacefulness and purity, said Ka Va, who helped organise the rally.

They waved American flags, giant portraits of Vang Pao and signs calling for the release of the Vietnam War-era general whose guerrillas rescued downed American pilots and waged an ultimately futile covert war orchestrated by the CIA.

"This is how much this man is loved," said Thomas Heffelfinger, one of Vang Pao's attorneys, said over the noise of the crowd. "This reflects the general's commitment to a peaceful agenda."

Heffelfinger, a former federal prosecutor from Minnesota, said he was hired by Vang Pao's supporters to assist John Balazs, the Sacramento attorney who was appointed by the court to represent the general last week.

Heffelfinger said Vang Pao is innocent of the charges, which could bring him life in prison if he is convicted.

Balazs argued that Vang Pao could safely be released to home confinement with a virtual communications blackout: No phones, computers or other communications devices.

But Assistant US Attorney Bob Twiss told Brennan that Vang Pao's influence is so sweeping and unquestioned that he could organise his followers no matter what restrictions are imposed, perhaps sending messages through intermediaries or with a smuggled cell phone.

"Thousands of people came here on the day of his detention hearing," Twiss said in an interview. "If General Vang Pao were to pick up a cell phone, is there any doubt they wouldn't execute his order? To me, it (the rally) was an indication of his ability to effectuate action indirectly."

Vang Pao has foresworn violence and lobbied peacefully for the United States to protect Hmong still being persecuted in Laos, Heffelfinger said. Moreover, the general has had heart bypass and gallbladder surgery and a stroke, and suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, he said.

"The mere fact that he has loyal followers does not make him dangerous," Heffelfinger said outside the courthouse. "The general is a man of peace."

Brennan nonetheless ordered Vang Pao detained. He also ordered the detention of two alleged coconspirators, Lo Thao and Nhia Vang, after brief separate hearings.

The general sat silently hunched over a table during the hearing, wearing a bright orange jail jumpsuit and listening through an interpreter.

Outside, supporters waved signs reading, "Honor your war heroes - don't jail them," and "Free our leader."

"He is like a supreme leader to all of us," said Silas Cha of Fresno, a leader of Hmong-American Concerned Citizens. "He is no threat to anyone, anywhere in the world. ... He is an American hero and a Hmong hero who has saved thousands of lives."

US Attorney McGregor Scott issued a statement saying his office respects the Hmong community's right to protest but expects they "will understand why we made the decisions we did" once more information becomes public.

Attorneys for the accused said they expect their clients to be indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury. The charges they face now were in a complaint filed by Scott's office. Their next hearing is set for Monday, when supporters are promising an even larger crowd.

US Justice Department goes after "freedom fighters"and rankles US conservatives

Hmong general Vang Pao, who was arrested last week for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government of Laos, speaking in 2000 after laying a wreath at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. (AFP Photo)

Guerrillas in our midst

The Justice Department goes after 'freedom fighters,' and rankles conservatives

June 10, 2007
By Joshua Kurlantzick
The Boston Globe (Boston, Mass., USA)

Earlier this week, the Justice Department announced a major bust. After a six-month undercover sting investigation, it charged nine people with violating the Neutrality Act, which bars Americans from plotting to topple foreign governments recognized by the US. The men, members of the Southeast Asian Hmong minority, allegedly envisioned a massive military operation, laying plans to ship surface-to-air missiles, rockets, mines, and guns to Laos to equip rebels there.

The alleged mastermind? Vang Pao, a 77-year-old refugee from Laos who for decades has been flamboyantly raising money to fund Hmong rebels -- and winning the admiration of American conservatives.

But in the post 9/11 era, Washington finds it can no longer tolerate guerrillas in America's midst. Vang Pao is part of a wave of arrests of fighters who have targeted nations like Laos, Cambodia, and Cuba with which Washington has historically maintained limited or no relations. The crackdown has put the Bush administration in a bind. If it doesn't act, it can be accused of a double standard in the war on terror -- a war that requires help from some of these very nations, like Cambodia. But when it does act, it draws the ire of some of its conservative supporters, who for years have embraced controversial fighters like Vang Pao, feting him in Washington at think tanks and congressional receptions.

In 1987 Vang Pao spoke at The Heritage Foundation, where he outlined his plans for revolution, telling the audience he would "overthrow the puppet regime" in Laos. He then won the support of conservative lawmakers like California's Dana Rohrabacher, who appeared at a reception several years ago for Vang Pao, where he reportedly shouted "Free Laos! Free Laos!" Vang Pao hired a Washington lobbying firm and earlier this decade his associates held "Congressional Forums on Laos" on Capitol Hill during which the lobbyists addressed lawmakers and aides.

After Vang Pao's arrest, conservative newspaper defended him, arguing, "We could barely believe our eyes. . . . He is a freedom fighter who will tower over any courtroom into which he is brought."

Vang Pao has been fighting a long time. In the 1960s, as the Vietnam War spread into Laos, where America conducted secret operations against the Vietnamese and Laotian communists, the United States recruited Vang Pao, the tough leader of a group of ethnic Hmong. Vang Pao and his men became experts in jungle warfare and, along with secret US advisors, fought in bloody encounters with the North Vietnamese and Laotian forces. As the war wound down, the US essentially abandoned the Hmong and Laotian forces brutalized them, leaving many of Vang Pao's men with a vicious taste for revenge.

Vang Pao eventually made it to America, where he essentially continued his warlord lifestyle. Former employees told me Vang Pao demanded absolute loyalty, telling them to leave their families to stay by his side. He surrounded himself with women (he has been married numerous times) and former army officers from Laos, and at community gatherings older Hmong reverently touched Vang Pao like he was a god.

With his support in the community, by the early 1980s Vang Pao had created an organization that solicited funds from Hmong refugees each month, the millions in donations supposedly earmarked to help insurgents still living in the jungles of Laos. In Laos' dense forests, small bands of fighters continued to wage war, and though it remained unclear whether they had ties to Vang Pao, early in this decade the militants attacked buses along the country's north-south highway, killing at least 12 people.

Vang Pao is ailing. When I met him on an assignment last year, in a Minnesota office near St.Paul's capitol building, he sometimes forgot where he was. But once he got rolling, the steel returned to his voice.

"We still can fight the Lao government," he told me. "With enough weapons, we can go back to war, wipe them out."

Nearly every Hmong-American I met had heard about Vang Pao's continued war. Many revered him, hanging photos of him in their houses, but some complained about his organization, which they felt hurt the image of the Hmong and siphoned money from refugees with little cash to give.

"He was taking money from even old women who were living with nothing," says Tou Long Lo, Vang Pao's former son-in-law, who used to work for the money-collecting operation.

In the global war on terror, Washington is finding more and more of these inconvenient freedom fighters. Shortly after 9/11, the US arrested Vo Duc Van, a member of the Government of Free Vietnam, a California-based group that fights the Vietnamese government, with which the US now has closer relations. Vo allegedly was involved in a plot to bomb the Vietnamese embassy in Bangkok, and the US has extradited him to stand trial in Thailand.

Then, in May 2005, federal agents arrested Luis Posada Carriles, a 79-year-old anti-Castro militant wanted in Venezuela on charges of bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976, an attack that killed 73 people. Carriles also admitted to other attacks, including the 1997 bombings of hotels in Cuba. Fidel Castro's government had used Carriles's case to make Washington look like it did not consistently prosecute terrorists, a point that resonated with many Latin American and European nations. (A judge dismissed his case, but the Justice Department is considering what steps to take next.)

Carriles's arrest was not popular with conservative Cuban exiles, important supporters of the White House. Carriles "has been fighting one of the worst tyrannies this continent has experienced," Pepe Hernandez, president of the hard-line Cuban American National Foundation, told reporters.

Only weeks after nabbing Carriles, the government arrested Chhun Yasith, a Long Beach, California, resident who had allegedly plotted an attempted coup in Cambodia in 2000. After the plan failed, the State Department had placed Chhun Yasith's organization on its terrorism watch list, but he had lived freely in California for years, and even raised money for the Republican Party. Today, however, the US relies on counterterrorism cooperation with Cambodia, which has arrested several members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al Qaeda-linked group.

When I interviewed Chhun Yasith before his arrest, he boasted to me that he had planned more attacks, and put me on speakerphone with fighters he claimed were hiding out on the Thai-Cambodian border. Chhun Yasith bluntly told me he had nothing to fear.

"The FBI comes here, they ask me questions, they don't do anything," he said with a big smile. Shortly after, they did.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of "Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World."

Gen Vang Pao, a fierce US ally in fighting communism in Laos, is arrested by the same US gov't he helped

Hmong-Americans Stunned by Laos Charges

By GARANCE BURKE
AP

FRESNO, Calif. - Many of the thousands of Hmong refugees who fled to the United States following the Vietnam War never accepted the communist government that took power in their native Laos.

And if federal prosecutors are right, some apparently never abandoned their dream of toppling it.

A revered leader of the Hmong-American population was among 10 men charged this week with plotting to overthrow the Laotian regime in a case that has shaken the growing immigrant community.

Many Hmong credit Vang Pao, a 77-year-old former general in the Royal Army of Laos who led Hmong counterinsurgents, with helping them build new lives in the U.S. In California and Minnesota, where the first large wave of refugees settled in the 1980s, Hmong-American politicians are rising quickly through political ranks.

Despite that momentum, some in the community say elders still long to return to their highland villages.

"People of my father's generation have hoped one day that they could go back to a free Laos and farm the plot of land they left 30 years ago," said Minnesota state Rep. Cy Thao of St. Paul. "Vang Pao is sort of their last hope. You hear them talk about it, but you don't ever think it will come to this point."

An undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives secretly recorded a Feb. 7 luncheon meeting with Vang Pao, former California National Guard Lt. Col. Harrison Jack and others at a Thai restaurant a few blocks from the state Capitol in Sacramento, according to the agent's affidavit.

They then walked to a recreational vehicle parked nearby to examine machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank rockets, anti-personnel mines and other weapons, the agent wrote.

Hmong leaders had agreed to buy $9.8 million worth of military weapons, Jack said in a recorded conversation, with much of the money coming from immigrants throughout the United States, the affidavit states.

Vang Pao appeared briefly in federal court Tuesday in Sacramento.

"Gen. Vang Pao has worked actively to pursue peaceful solutions to the problems in Laos and has disavowed violence," his attorney, John Balazs, said afterward. "We look forward to a trial where we can demonstrate Gen. Pao's innocence."

An attorney for Jack declined to comment after a court proceeding Monday.

Vang Pao and the other nine defendants were scheduled for detention hearings later this week. Prosecutors recommended that all be held without bail until their trials.

"People don't know right now whether the charges are justified or a witch hunt. We just want people to remember that for 20 years the Hmong community has worked to make sure that this is our home," said Peter Vang, refugee community liaison for Fresno County, home to about 30,000 ethnic Hmong.

After fighting as U.S.-backed guerillas in Laos, members of the ethnic minority were all but abandoned when the country fell to communist forces in 1975. More than 300,000 Laotian refugees, mostly Hmong, fled into Thailand.

About 145,000 members of Laotian ethnic groups resettled in the U.S., establishing large enclaves in Fresno, St. Paul, Minn., cities across Wisconsin and in small towns throughout Arkansas' Ozark mountains.

Among those charged Monday were the founder of Fresno's annual Hmong International New Year celebration, a former police officer from the nearby suburb of Clovis and a one-time aide to former Wisconsin state Sen. Gary George.

George, 53, who recently finished serving a four-year prison term for taking kickbacks from a Milwaukee social service agency, is not charged in the Laos case. The ATF agent's affidavit, however, states that "probable cause exists to believe" George was involved in it.

George's attorney, Alex Flynn of Milwaukee, did not return repeated telephone messages from The Associated Press. Earlier Tuesday, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that the allegations are "utterly preposterous and categorically false."

Investigators also were examining whether those charged tried to use an unidentified congressman and the California Highway Patrol without their knowledge, according to authorities and court documents.

During a March meeting at a Sacramento restaurant, the affidavit says, Jack told the undercover ATF agent that he had contacted a patrol commissioner and arranged for Hmong leaders to help recruit.

The goal was for the Hmong officers to eventually move to Laos "to take positions of trust" in the new Lao government, the affidavit says.

Federal prosecutors said the men who are charged conspired with a Laotian liberation movement, led in the U.S. by Vang Pao, who splits his time between homes in the Twin Cities _ which has the largest concentration of Hmong in the United States _ and Southern California. The group raised money, directed surveillance operations and organized a force of insurgent troops within Laos, according to the complaint.

Somphet Khoukahoun, the permanent secretary for the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Tuesday he would wait to comment until authorities were briefed by U.S. officials.

Like many of their counterparts in the U.S., Hmong leaders in Thailand said they found the charges unbelievable.

"I think the charges are meant by rival Hmong in the United States to smear him," said Ming Wui, a Hmong Christian minister.

In Laos, Hmong people are still subject to detentions and human rights violations, according to the U.S. Department of State. Many recent immigrants arrive still traumatized by war and decades of persecution, said Sharon Stanley, director of Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries.

Vang Pao's arrest has crushed families struggling to assume a new, American identity, said Blong Xiong, a Hmong-American city councilman in Fresno, where Hmong grocery stores and restaurants are fixtures in most shopping malls.

"I'm hoping that the mainstream understands that our community continues to share the American ideals we defended," Xiong said.

Associated Press writers Sutin Wannabovorn and Ambika Ahuja in Bangkok, Don Thompson in Sacramento and Gregg Aamot in Minneapolis contributed to this report.