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The discharge of 4 flight attendants caught illegally bringing a stash of narcotics hidden in toothpaste tubes into Vietnam has sparked a variety of reactions, with some folks astonished that they escaped harsh punishment and others extra supportive of the choice to free them.
“Oh my God, how come they have been launched after transporting over 11 kilograms of medicine?” stated Facebooker Minh Duc. “Taking this job is an efficient selection. If arrested, simply say somebody requested you to hold the stuff, and also you don’t know [it contained drugs]…”
Radio Free Asia reader Dieu Hanh stated the case was “fairly bizarre” as a result of Vietnam has a protracted custom of imprisoning individuals who convey medicine to the nation illegally, even when they are saying they have been pressured to take action.
“Some even have been sentenced to dying,” stated Hanh. “Don’t count on you may be launched when testifying that you just didn’t understand it was unlawful medicine.
Hanh went on to say that the flight attendants should have influential mother and father who managed to get them off the hook.
“In Vietnam, it’s not simple to have a job at Vietnam Airways if you’re not the kids of somebody [who has power or money],” Hanh stated. “In the event that they have been commoners’ youngsters, they might be jailed for years.”
These caught with a couple of kilogram of unlawful medicine can obtain as much as 20 years or life imprisonment or the dying sentence, legal professional Dang Dinh Manh stated in a Fb put up on March 21, earlier than the flight attendants have been launched.
Beneath Vietnamese regulation, the crime of drug trafficking is set on the idea of “intentional fault,” in order that the perpetrators should know they’re transporting unlawful narcotics to be responsible, he added.
In 2000, a Vietnamese courtroom handed down a dying sentence to Nguyen Thi Hiep, a Vietnamese Canadian, for smuggling narcotics.
At the moment, a Canadian international ministry spokesman stated it was regrettable that two months earlier than Hiep’s execution, Canada had offered the Vietnamese authorities with proof, together with video and audio recordsdata displaying that she could have been pressured into carrying medicine in her baggage when leaving Vietnam. The Vietnamese authorities didn’t think about the proof, nonetheless.
One other aspect
Different Vietnamese sided with the flight attendants.
Journalist Chau Doan wrote on his Fb web page that they have been harmless as a result of their “statements have been very constant, indicating they have been naïve [and] harmless, [but] not dishonest.”
Legal professional Tran Dai Lam from Hanoi informed RFA on Thursday that he believes the choice by Ho Chi Minh Metropolis police to launch the 4 flight attendants was acceptable in authorized phrases.
“On this case, if the police later can’t show their crime, we must always see it as a authorized precedent and apply it to comparable circumstances that did happen, are occurring, or will happen within the coming time,” he stated. “We can’t convict an individual rapidly with the intention to punish her or him by all means.”
Different netizens stated many Vietnam Airways workers, together with flight captains and co-captains had been concerned in drug trafficking, so the case of the 4 flight attendants was not that uncommon.
In April 2008, Vietnam Airways’ pilot Lai Quoc Viet was arrested in Australia and given a 9.5-year jail time period for his involvement in an enormous money-laundering and drug ring.
Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority on Thursday barred the flight attendants from working within the airline business the day after Ho Chi Minh Metropolis police allow them to go as a result of an absence of proof.
On March 16, customs officers at Tan Son Nhat Worldwide Airport in Ho Chi Minh Metropolis found greater than 11 kilograms (25 lbs.) of MDMA, generally known as ecstasy, ketamine and cocaine, in scores of toothpaste tubes of their baggage. The flight attendants stated they agreed to move the tubes for an unidentified particular person in Paris, the place the flight originates, for greater than 10 million dong, or U.S. $424.
Police detained the ladies, who stated they have been unaware of the contents, and searched their houses. They launched the flight attendants on Wednesday as a result of inadequate proof, and the next day civil aviation authorities banned them from working within the airline business.
An unnamed civil aviation official stated the choice to bar them from working within the business was primarily based on Ministry of Transport laws on particular labor self-discipline for airline staff, state media reported.
The regulation stipulates that “enterprises within the civil aviation business are to not make use of those that have abused their place to commerce and transport people, property and items illegally.”
The official additionally stated there have been loopholes in laws that made combating and stopping smuggling within the aviation business tough.
Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.
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