Two former police officers from Dong Thap Province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta have been sentenced to up to one and a half years in prison for applying corporal punishment that led to the death of a suspect.

The provincial People’s Court on Tuesday condemned Huynh Ngoc Tong, 41, a former police officer at the Bureau of Police in Cao Lanh City, which is the capital of Dong Thap, to one year and six months in jail, and Pham Xuan Binh, 31, another officer at the bureau, to 11 months and 11 days behind bars.

The two defendants were found guilty of causing the death of 30-year-old Nguyen Tuan Thanh after applying physical punishment on the victim.

According to the indictment of the Supreme People’s Procuracy, Thanh was arrested by police in Cao Lanh on November 16, 2012 for allegedly being involved in a motorbike theft.

Tong and Binh were assigned to interrogate the suspect, which ended with Thanh admitting that he was responsible for stealing six vehicles.

The suspect was later brought back to his detention facility with several bruises across his body.

Thanh was then escorted to the provincial Department of Police the following day for further investigation, where officers discovered him unconscious, drooling and with a pale face at around noon.

The victim was immediately taken to the Dong Thap General Hospital, whose doctors concluded that the patient had died.

Results of an autopsy pointed to a circulatory collapse as the cause of Thanh’s death, which arose from multiple injuries inflicted by external forces on critical body parts, especially the xiphoid and epigastric region.

Family members hold the photo of deceased Nguyen Tuan Thanh at the trial on May 17, 2016. Photo: Tuoi Tre

According to a representative of the procuracy, investigations showed that the two former police officers had beaten Thanh with their fists and batons.

Other officers were also involved in the assault on the victim, the representative said, before adding that there was insufficient evidence against them.

At the trial, Tong did not plead guilty, asserting that the indictment was “deductive,” “imaginary,” and “untrue” as he did not torture the deceased victim.

Binh also denied all charges against him, saying that he was duped by investigators into confessing.

“The investigators said I should do what they told me as my wife was pregnant and my parents are old. They promised that I would be administratively penalized only,” the defendant explained.

However, the jury reached their own decision, ruling that the two attacked the victim during interrogation, leading directly to his death.

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