HANOI - A court in southern Vietnam handed down jail terms of up to 20 years on Tuesday for 37 people convicted of plotting terrorism and anti-socialist activity, a senior court official said.
"Nobody got death or life sentences, all were jailed," the official told Reuters, adding that the longest jail term was 20 years and the shortest 30 months.
He gave no further details, but sources in the courtroom said the key defendant -- 33-year-old Le Kim Hung -- received 20 years imprisonment.
State prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Hung.
Another defendant, Son Nguyen Thanh Dien -- identified in official media as a U.S. passport holder -- was jailed for 16 years.
According to press reports, Dien was arrested near Ho Chi Minh City's Catholic cathedral last August carrying three grenades, a map and "reactionary writings."
But the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City said it had not had access to Dien and had no evidence he was an American citizen.
When contacted by the consulate, Vietnamese authorities denied Dien had a U.S. passport and consular officials could not find his name on databases of citizens, spokesman Scott Weinhold told Reuters.
He added that Dien may have had legal residency in the U.S., but the consulate had no way of checking.
"Basically, we just don't know anything about him at all," Weinhold said.
A court official told Reuters earlier this month that the mastermind behind the plots was still at large in the United States.
Official media has said all the defendants were linked to the Free Vietnam movement, made of anti-communist exiles. Most of the defendants are Vietnamese who had been living in Cambodia or Thailand.
The official Vietnam News Agency last week quoted prosecutors as saying the offences were "extremely serious" and had "encroached on national security, caused social disorder and posed threats to people's lives."
Some defendants were accused of plotting to blow up statues of late revolutionary hero Ho Chi Minh and to disrupt religious festivals to discredit the communist authorities.
Originally 38 people were scheduled to go on trial, but official media said only 36 were in court as one defendant had died of AIDS and another was critically ill with the same disease.
In the past year, Vietnam's leaders have repeatedly called on the population to be on guard against sabotage attempts by "hostile forces."
Such forces include exiles connected with the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam defeated by the communists in 1975.
01:26 05-29-01
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