An appeals court in central Vietnam upheld Thursday a death sentence given last year to a local man for illegally carrying six kilograms of heroin and 12,000 ecstasy pills from Laos to 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 Nghe An Province, according to the indictment.

Tu fiercely fought back but could neither escape to Laos nor get rid of all the exhibits as he wanted.  

Investigators have confirmed that the man was hired by a Laotian to bring the drugs into Vietnam but they have yet to find out the mastermind.

Earlier a first instance court in the same province imposed the capital punishment on Tu on December 26, 2012. He then submitted an appeal for a commutation to life imprisonment.

But Tu was unable to put forward any mitigating factor so the appeals court decided to dismiss his petition, given the enormous volume of drugs.