Hanoi - A court in Ho Chi Minh City Tuesday convicted one Vietnamese-American, one Vietnamese-Thai, and one Vietnamese democracy activist of planning to commit terrorist acts, after they were arrested last November with leaflets suggesting they planned to agitate for multiparty democracy. The People's Court of Ho Chi Minh City sentenced American citizen Nguyen Quoc Quan to six months in prison, which with time served means he will be deported from Vietnam in four days. Vietnamese citizen Nguyen The Vu was sentenced to time served and released, plus one year of restricted movement in which he must ask police for permission to leave his neighborhood.
Vietnamese-born Thai citizen Somsak Khunmi, whom the court refers to by the Vietnamese name Nguyen Hai, was sentenced to nine months plus three years of restricted movement. He will be released in three months.
"Hai played a higher role in the group, and he did it for a longer time," said Presiding Judge Vu Phi Long. Long said the accused had pled not guilty to the charge of terrorism.
Quan, Vu and Khunmi are members of the Viet Tan Party, an exile organization which agitates for democratic change in Vietnam. They were arrested in November in Ho Chi Minh City along with two other Viet Tan members, Vietnamese-American Leon Trung and French citizen Le Thi Thanh Van.
Trung and Van were released and deported in December. Vietnamese authorities said Quan was held longer because he had entered Vietnam using a false Cambodian passport.
The Viet Tan Party said the group was in Vietnam to pursue strategies for peaceful democratic change. Vietnam considers Viet Tan to be a terrorist organization, and says members of the group carried out armed missions inside Vietnam in the early 1980s.
