VIETNAM REPORT SAYS WOMAN LIED TO POLICE

She was 'confused' when heroin found in decorative panels

A Toronto seamstress lied when she was asked to explain how decorative
panels containing 5.4 kilograms of heroin came to be in her suitcase,
Vietnamese police say.

According to a confidential Vietnamese police report obtained by The Star,
Nguyen Thi Hiep told customs officers at Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport that the
suitcase actually belonged to her 74-year-old mother, Tran Thi Cam, who was
travelling with her when they were stopped April 25, 1996.

Nguyen, 43, is quoted in the report as telling investigators she was
"confused" when customs officers discovered the heroin, secreted in five
decorative panels in her suitcase.

"When the customs officer discovered the packet of powder I did not
understand what it was and I was very confused and worried with fear, not
knowing what to do," Nguyen told investigators, according to the report.

"I told my mother to keep on saying that it was her suitcase and the
paintings were for someone who sent them," adds the report, which has been
translated into English.

"Therefore my mother stated as such. Certainly in reality my mother never
knew anything about this affair."

Toronto police investigators believe Nguyen was an unwitting drug mule who
was talked into transporting the panels for Phu Hoa, a Mississauga man who
is now in a Canadian prison for heroin trafficking.

They found her story identical to that of another Vietnamese-born Toronto
resident who was caught at Pearson airport carrying similar panels
containing heroin.

The woman claimed she was simply carrying the panels for a friend and knew
nothing about the drugs. After an investigation here, the charges were
dropped.

But Nguyen, arrested in Hanoi, received no such benefit of the doubt, and
the record of her interrogation by Vietnamese police suggests the Toronto
seamstress thought she was being stopped on a minor procedural matter.

"The reason why I told my mother like that," the record of her interrogation
states, "because I thought that the fact was simple, not complicated.

"Only now," Nguyen is quoted as telling the investigator, "do I realize the
seriousness of the event. For that reason," she added, "I clarified my
statement. Those were the facts."

But it was too late.

After spending four years shackled hand and foot in a rat-infested cell,
Nguyen was bound and gagged last week and taken before a firing squad at a
Hanoi prison.

Her ailing mother, sentenced to life in prison, is serving her term in the
hospital wing of Thanh Xuan detention centre near Hanoi.

Vietnamese authorities claim Nguyen told investigators that she agreed to
take the decorative panels back to Canada one or two days before she was
leaving Hanoi because a friend of her husband, who lives in Vietnam, asked
her to carry the panels for a friend.

"He telephoned me that if I returned to Canada he wants to send a small gift
of two small sets of paintings (lacquered panels) to a person named Va Ty,"
Nguyen's statement reads.

Va Ty was a nickname used by Phu Hoa, the Mississauga man who is now serving
a 14-year sentence for heroin trafficking.