TORONTO WOMAN'S FAMILY VISITS HANOI KILLING GROUND

Hopes To Rebury Nguyen's Body, Free Her Mother

They brought 200 red rosebuds to cover the makeshift grave of a
Canadian executed on the killing grounds of a Hanoi prison for drug
smuggling.

Nguyen Thi Hiep's family had come halfway around the world to pay
respects. They wept as they waded waist-deep into the killing ground -
temporarily flooded - where the Toronto woman was shot, to place
flowers on her shallow grave.

Nguyen, 43, is the first Canadian known to have been executed on drug
smuggling charges. Her body lies close to the spot where she was
bound, gagged and blindfolded before facing a firing squad at dawn,
Hanoi time, on April 25.

note that Canadian documents list execution date as April 24 -- that's
EDT

She and her mother Tran Thi Cam, 74, were caught at Hanoi's Noi Bai
airport April 25, 1996, carrying 5.4 kilos of heroin hidden in
lacquered art panels. Their pleas that they were innocent dupes were
ignored.

For the past four years, until her death, Nguyen was kept shackled
hand and foot in a cell of the Xuan Phuong detention centre. Her
mother is serving a life sentence at the Thanh Xuan detention camp
near Hanoi.

"All my family cried, just cried, as we put 200 red roses on her
grave," Nguyen Hung, 36, of Brampton, brother of the dead woman, said
in a phone interview with The Star yesterday, a day after his arrival
in Hanoi.

Nguyen Hung was accompanied on the Toronto-Hanoi flight by Nguyen Thi
Hiep's sons Trung Le, 26, and Tu Le, 21, of Brampton, and his sister
Nguyen Lien, 46, of Toronto.

"She loved red roses . . . red rosebuds," Nguyen's husband, Tran Hieu,
56, said in an interview translated by his brother-in-law Nguyen Hung.

Nguyen's family was to meet officials from Vietnam's foreign ministry
in Hanoi today to make arrangements to bury her remains.

Superintendent Ron Taverner, head of the Toronto police's Special
Investigation Services, said police will meet Canadian foreign affairs
ministry officials in Ottawa to discuss the fate of Nguyen's mother
and to talk about an official visit to Vietnam later this month by the
police heroin squad.

Toronto police believe that Nguyen and her daughter may have been
duped into carrying the drugs by an international heroin ring.
Taverner was optimistic about discussing international drug operations
with Vietnamese officials.

"We see this as opening a door for ongoing dialogue."

"Vietnam welcomes co-operation from all countries, including Canada,
in the battle against drugs," foreign ministry spokesperson Phan Thuy
Thanh said in a recent statement from Hanoi.

In response to questions on Tran Thi Cam's possible release from
prison, the statement said: "Vietnamese authorities are considering
the proposal by the Canadian side in a spirit of humanitarianism" and
within the law.

Nguyen's family will meet Hanoi officials to arrange for her remains
to be removed from the Hanoi prison grounds and, the family hopes, to
talk about her imprisoned mother, Nguyen Hung said yesterday.

"They're giving the most positive consideration" to releasing the
mother, Canadian ambassador Cecile Latour told The Star in a phone
interview from Hanoi yesterday. "We have to wait."

Latour, who accompanied Nguyen's family, had been recalled earlier.
Ottawa says her return is temporary.

Although the family had originally requested that Nguyen's remains be
returned to Canada, it's now bowing to the wishes of her father Nguyen
Cong, 85, who lives in Hanoi.

Nguyen Hung said in keeping with Buddhist tradition, the body will
rest in a Hanoi burial ground for three years before her bones are
removed, washed in wine and transported to Canada.

With files from Reuters