MAN TRIED TO SAVE WIFE FROM EXECUTION

Pleas Made To Our Hanoi Embassy

Tran Hieu made two frantic phone calls to the Canadian embassy in Hanoi the evening before his wife Nguyen Thi Hiep was shot by a firing squad at dawn, The Star has learned.

"They are going to execute my wife in the next eight hours," an anguished Tran Hieu said he told an embassy worker on April 24. The exclusive interview from his Hanoi home yesterday was translated by his stepson Trung Le.

Nguyen, a 43-year-old Toronto seamstress, is the only Canadian citizen to be executed on drug charges. She faced the firing squad at the Hanoi's Xuan Phong detention centre on April 25. In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs spokesperson Reynald Doiron said the message relayed from the Canadian embassy in Hanoi appeared to be a rumour of the pending execution of an unknown person.

"If it had specifically identified the person to be executed as Ms. Nguyen, then we would have totally shaken the cage," Doiron said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy has demanded an explanation after learning that Canadian embassy officials had been told about the execution ahead of time.

"The minister has asked for a full accounting," ministry spokesperson Debora Brown said yesterday.

Axworthy was at his party's national caucus in Winnipeg last night and unavailable for comment.

"We're going to examine how the exchange of information took place," Doiron said.

Even though Nguyen was shackled in a death row cell, written assurances had been made to the Canadian government by the Vietnamese government that her execution would be stayed so Toronto police could present evidence that she and her 74-year-old mother, Tran Thi Cam, might have been innocent dupes, said Doiron.

Nguyen and her mother claimed they were innocent when they were caught carrying 5.4 kilograms of heroin hidden in decorative lacquered panels at Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport on April 25, 1996.

Ever since his wife's execution, Tran had kept the terrible secret of his phone calls to the embassy for fear it might hurt his mother-in-law's chances of getting out of prison.

"I was thinking the only way to get her out of jail is with the help of the Canadian government," said Tran.

But now Tran Thi Cam's release from prison is guaranteed. A Canadian landed immigrant, the Brampton grandmother is on a list of 10,408 prisoners to be released in honour of Vietnam's National Day, Sept. 2.

Tran recalled yesterday how he got a phone call April 24 from a friend who worked at the Hanoi prison. It was 7 p.m. The friend said a woman was to be executed the next day.

An hour later, after confirming his wife's name was on the execution papers, Tran made two frantic calls to the cell phone of Vu Thu, the translator at the Canadian embassy in Hanoi. It was Easter Monday.

"I told the translator it's going to happen," Tran said, who added Vu said he would give the message to consular official Jean-Pierre Nadeau.

But when a panicked Tran phoned back 30 minutes later, he was told Nadeau was in Thailand. "He said he transferred the message to the ambassador's assistant."

After that, a despondent Tran got on his motorcycle and drove around Hanoi for hours trying to decide his next move. "I really didn't know what to do," he said. Ten hours later, his wife was dead.

Three days later, two Canadian embassy officials and a translator came to Tran's house and said they were sorry, he recalled.

Ambassaor Cecile Latour was in Canada at the time of the execution but later returned to Vietnam. Nadeau has since retired and could not be reached at his Hanoi home.

When reached yesterday, Vu, the embassy translator in Hanoi, said: "I'm busy right now. I can't answer your question. I have urgent matters to attend to."

Doiron, who confirmed that Tran made the calls to the embassy in Hanoi, said that after Tran's phone calls, Vu reached a consular employee between 10 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. who then phoned the the embassy's then charge d'affaires, Virginie St. Louis.

At about 2 a.m. Hanoi time, St. Louis started phoning Ottawa, Doiron said.

It was Easter Monday afternoon in Canada when St. Louis phoned the watch officer in Ottawa, who relayed her call to John Donaghy, director of the geographic desk, responsible for bilateral relations between Vietnam and Canada.

Donaghy asked St. Louis if the conversation pinpointed Nguyen Thi Hiep but St. Louis replied it was a rumour, Doiron said he was told. "Donaghy gave her directions to get clarification from the Vietnamese foreign ministry."

But before St. Louis could get through "the husband (Tran Hieu) phoned to tell her his wife had been executed," Doiron added.