EXECUTED WOMAN LIED, COURT SAYS

Vietnamese documents claim Canadian woman 'continuously changed'
smuggling case story

A Canadian woman who was executed in Hanoi was convicted because she
lied to police, implicated her mother and gave vague testimony at her
drug trafficking trial, according to a Vietnamese court ruling.

The translated Supreme Court decision, which is a scant eight pages,
is the only court documentation the Vietnamese government has given
Canada since Nguyen Thi Hiep was found guilty in 1997 of trying to
ferry $5 million in heroin through the Hanoi international airport.

"Nguyen Thi Hiep had continuously changed her testimony," says the
August 1997 ruling from the Court of Appeal of the People's Supreme
Court, upholding the death sentence imposed on the Toronto seamstress
earlier that year.

The Canadian government, Ms. Nguyen's family and a vast network of
supporters are furious that she was blindfolded, gagged, tied to a
post and shot to death one week ago, despite assurances from Vietnam
that her execution had been put on hold while authorities reviewed
fresh evidence from Canada that she might have been duped.

Ms. Nguyen proclaimed her innocence to the end.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy is now trying to free Ms.
Nguyen's ailing, 74-year-old mother, Tran Thi Cam, who was imprisoned
for life for helping her daughter.

When the two women were caught with 5.4 kilograms of heroin hidden in
art panels, Ms. Nguyen denied knowing anything about the lacquer
paintings packed in her mother's brown suitcase, says the decision.

But Ms. Nguyen, in a claim that she was trying to protect her mother,
reversed her position by acknowledging she was given $100 to bring the
decorative panels to Canada as a gift for a man she knew only as an
acquaintance, says the ruling.

"That the defendant changed her testimony ... (is) all aimed at
evading her criminal responsibility for her accomplished offences,"
the ruling says.

Ms. Nguyen's mother also gave vague and conflicting testimony on her
role in taking the art panels to Toronto because she said she was
trying to protect her daughter, the court said.

The confusing ruling, however, leaves out time references and mixes up
the order in which the varying stories were relayed.

Ms. Nguyen's family has said she initially denied knowing about the
art panels because she panicked when she was caught.

"She was terrified," said Win Wahrer, a spokeswoman for the
Toronto-based Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, warning
that Vietnamese court records are not to be trusted. "If those
transcripts came out of Vietnam, God only knows how much of it is true."

It was the Vietnamese Supreme Court decision that prompted Mr.
Axworthy and other high-level supporters to seek clemency for Ms. Nguyen.

The execution by firing squad, carried out in secret, has chilled
relations between Vietnam and Canada, which is working on an official
action plan of further diplomatic and economic sanctions against the
developing country.

Canada has already boycotted festivities marking the 25th anniversary
of the end of the Vietnam War and severed assistance in Vietnam's bid
to join the World Trade Organization.

The federal government is enraged that Ms. Nguyen, a
Vietnamese-Canadian who came to Canada in the early 1980s, was
executed before Vietnamese authorities reviewed fresh evidence sent to
them two months ago.

Toronto police investigated the case after another Toronto seamstress
was given $100 to carry art panels containing heroin to the same
Mississauga man at about the same time in 1996. But she was caught at
Pearson airport and charges against her were dropped because she was
found to have been duped into carrying drugs.

Vietnamese authorities have dismissed Canada's suspicions of
innocence, sticking with the ruling they say was the result of a fair,
public trial.

The court ruling, describing the crime as one of a "special grave
nature," devotes several paragraphs to the need for harsh treatment of
drug traffickers to reflect public demands and protect national security.

There is no explanation in the court ruling of why the women received
different sentences.