The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court on Tuesday sentenced a 31-year-old Thai woman to death for trafficking 2 kg of drug from Brazil to Vietnam.

>> Nigerian gets death for drug trafficking in Vietnam Chaimongkol Suracha 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. She arrived on a flight from Dubai, where she transited after flying from Brazil. Tests later confirmed that the powder was cocaine, and the smuggled drugs weighed 1.983 kg. Suracha told the court that she befriended an African national last year, and the man introduced her to a person known as Mieara, who promised to find Suracha a job at a car exporting company. On August 12, 2012, Mieara took Suracha to Vietnam after telling her that she would be introduced to the boss of the company. Later that day, Mieara and Suracha flew from Vietnam to Brazil, where the company was apparently located. When they arrived in Brazil, Mieara gave Suracha US$1,000 to cover her expenses. During Suracha’s stay in Brazil, several people took her to supermarkets shop at their expense. They also invited the Thai woman to dine with them at restaurants. In late September 2012, these same people bought a ticket for Suracha to fly back to Vietnam. They told her that she would meet the boss again there. They also gave her two albums containing cocaine and asked her to bring it to Vietnam. Suracha personally packed the albums into her luggage. She told the court that she had not known there was cocaine hidden in the two albums, but the jury concluded that the woman had “illegally transported drugs.” On Monday, the HCMC People’s Court handed down a death sentence to a 31-year-old Nigerian man for smuggling more than 3.4 kg of synthetic drugs from Qatar to Vietnam. The trafficker, Ejiogu Benjamin Ikechukwu, was arrested at HCMC’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport on June 23, 2012. Under Vietnam’s laws, those who are convicted of smuggling more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine will be given a death sentence.

The capital penalty is also applied to those who are indicted for producing or selling 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics.

Several foreigners have recently been sentenced to death for smuggling drugs into Vietnam.

On February 2, 2012 the southern Tay Ninh provincial court sentenced Chinese national Zhu Yin Xiang, 48, to death for trafficking over 1.3kg of heroin from Cambodia into Vietnam on August 16, 2012.

In June 2012, a 23-year-old female student from Thailand received the death penalty from a Ho Chi Minh City court for trafficking three kilograms of methamphetamine from Benin to Vietnam.

Last October, a court also sentenced a 61-year-old Filipino woman to death for smuggling five kilograms of methamphetamine into the country.