Australian gets 20 years for heroin smuggling
June 2, 2005 - 5:43PM
An Australian man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Vietnam after being convicted of trying to smuggle 200g of heroin from Vietnam to Australia.
Tony Tran, 43, an Australian of Vietnamese descent, was arrested at a house in Phu Yen province after trying to send 200g of heroin in laminated photographs to various addresses in Australia, said Nguyen Van Minh, a court official in Phu Yen, 500km north of Ho Chi Minh City
Tran faced a maximum sentence of death for the crime but the court gave him its lightest penalty.
The court said Tran and his girlfriend bought the heroin in Ho Chi Minh City, and tried to post it in small portions in May 2004, Minh said.
"We seized the heroin in the photos before it was sent out, and the crime is punishable by between 20 years in prison and the death sentence, so he was given the lightest sentence," the court official said.
Tran's 33-year-old Vietnamese girlfriend Le Thi Van was given 15 years in jail after the two-day trial that ended yesterday.
Australian embassy representatives were not immediately available for comment today.
The case comes less than a week after Gold Coast woman Schapelle Corby was sentenced by an Indonesian court to 20 years in prison for trying to smuggle 4.1kg of cannabis into Bali.
20 years
Schlapper Corby gets 24/7 coverage and all the outrage we can muster and Tony Tran gets a byline. Why?