The Supreme People’s Court in Hanoi on Thursday upheld 29 out of the 30 death sentences for the drug traffickers who were tried by a court in northern Quang Ninh Province early this year. This is the largest-ever drug case in Vietnam.

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On January 20, 2014, the provincial People’s Court opened the first-instance trial for 89 defendants involved in five trafficking rings that transported and sold 4,400 bricks of heroin. The court then issued the death sentences to 30 of the drug traffickers.

After the trial, all these 30 death-sentenced defendants and ten others – most of them were given life sentences – later appealed for a commutation, which led to the opening of the appeal hearing for them yesterday.

After considering the appeals by these defendants, the Hanoi court agreed to commute the capital sentence to life imprisonment for only one defendant, Nong Van Len. Len took part in the transport and sale of 20 bricks of heroin but after being arrested, he provided the investigators with important information that helped police with their investigation.

Besides Len, ten other defendants saw their life sentences commuted to jail terms.

Finally, the court pronounced 29 death sentences, imposed life sentences on four, and handed down jail terms of four to 20 years to the seven others.

Largest-ever drug case

This is the largest drug trafficking case that has been discovered and tried in Vietnam, considering the number of defendants, the volume of drugs involved, and the number of death sentences passed, the court said.

This is also the first hearing in the country where the jury handed down a record-high number of death sentences.

The jury also ordered the defendants to hand in the profits they had earned through drugs. The amounts to be submitted by each defendant are different, ranging from VND10 million (US$480) to VND10 billion ($480,000).

According to the indictment, Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc, a 54-year-old woman in northern Bac Giang Province, had led a ring that trafficked drugs from Laos into Vietnam since late 2006 until April 2012, when she was arrested at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi.

From Ngoc’s testimonies, police later cracked down on four other transnational drug rings, arresting 89 people and seizing about 4,400 bricks of heroin, 20 cars, dozens of guns, and a lot of fake documents and materials.

Besides being charged with illegally transporting and trading in drugs, many of the 89 defendants, including 27 women, were also indicted for counterfeiting materials of agencies and organizations, storing weapons, illegal trading, failing to report crimes, giving bribes, and bribery brokerage.

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