The appeal court of the Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday increased the sentences for three women who were charged with transnational drug trafficking from Cambodia to Vietnam.

>> Death penalty upheld for Vietnamese carrying 6kg of heroin >> Thai woman sentenced to death for drug trafficking The hearing was opened under the protest by the HCMC People’s Procuracy, which maintained that the three defendants should be given heavier sentences than those handed down at the earlier trial by the HCMC People’s Court.  Accordingly, Thai Thi Diem Trang, 31, of HCMC’s Tan Phu District, got a life sentence, while at the instance trial she was sentenced to only 20 years in prison. Her two accomplices, Ngo Thi Phuong Thao and Nguyen Thị Kim Loan, each had their sentence increased by one year to 19 years and 17 years, respectively. According to the indictment, on June 1, 2012, Thao was caught hiding 1.5 kg of methamphetamine, a kind of synthetic drug, in her backpack while carrying out procedures to fly to Malaysia at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City . From Thao’s testimonies, police later seized Trang and Loan.   Trang was the mastermind of the trafficking ring. She had contacted African drug traffickers to carry out transnational drug trafficking activities through Vietnam. Trang and an African drug dealer agreed that she would be paid US$1,700 if the above 1.5 kg of meth was successfully brought to Malaysia from Cambodia. Trang later hired Loan to carry the drugs from Cambodia to Vietnam for $300, and then hired Thao to bring the product to Malaysia for $1,100. In similar news, an appeal court in central Nghe An Province last Thursday upheld a death sentence given last year to a local man for illegally carrying six kilograms of heroin and 12,000 ecstasy pills from Laos into Vietnam. Vietnamese border soldiers arrested Mua Ba Tu, 28, on July 18 last year when he was transporting the drugs across the Laos-Vietnam frontier to his hometown in Nghe An, according to the indictment.

On August 20 the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court also sentenced a 31-year-old Thai woman, Chaimongkol Suracha, to death for trafficking 2 kg of drug from Brazil to Vietnam.

She was arrested on October 1, 2012 at Tan Son Nhat International Airport after customs officers caught her hiding four bags of white powder in two albums packed in her luggage.