Hom Kosal, 37, at the appeal trial in Ho Chi Minh City July 3. Photo: Le Nga
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Vietnam's top court on Thursday commuted the death sentence of a Cambodian woman convicted for trafficking more than five kilograms of methamphetamine to life in prison.
Hom Kosal, 37, was sentenced to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City last September. She appealed the sentence, producing documents to prove that she has a child under 3 years of age.
In Vietnam, a death sentence pronounced on a woman with a child under the age of 3 will be commuted to a life sentence.
On Thursday, Kosal told judges of the Supreme People’s Court, Vietnam’s highest court, that she did not mention her child in the trial court because she was unaware of Vietnamese laws.
Kosal was arrested at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCMC on April 21, 2013 after police found white some powder in her checked-in suitcase and tests established that it was 5.2 kilograms of methamphetamine.
She told the court she got to know an African man during the time she worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Phnom Penh in 2011.
The man invited her to Benin, a country in West Africa, three times.
Before the third trip, he gave her US$1,300. In Benin, she met another African man named Tony.
Tony asked her to bring the suitcase from Benin to Vietnam by air and then to Cambodia by road, and promised to pay her $2,000.
Vietnam has some of the world's toughest drug laws. Those convicted of smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine face the death penalty.
The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is also punishable by death.
Vietnam officially switched from the firing squad to lethal injection in November 2011. But it was not until last August that the country executed its first prisoner with the new method due to a shortage of the fatal serum required to carry it out.
1 comment:
i loathe drug dealers , they are ruining bright young minds... but did you know that it is always the small fish that always get caught and punished... the big ones are above the law and most time are part of the gov itself [ officials ]; in the US people know that the CIA besides going around the world to create conflicts [ gov there getting overthrown ] also deals in drug transportation -- there were many evidences which were suppressed by the officials themselves and those who dare say anything end up dead [ car accident , or food poisoning etc.. ] they were about to lose the cocaine business to taliban so the excuses of chasing after bin laden was created , now the US are there mostly to protect the cocaine crops.. they even have pictures of soldiers patrolling cocaine fields but the pictures disappeared as soon as they were posted ... same situation for colombia another drug producing haven . the CIA was there , one of their plane crashed and they found stashes of drugs inside but the news never got to the public.. no news TV or paper dared report it... the list goes on.
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