SLAIN WOMAN'S SONS HOPE TO SAVE GRANDMA

Vietnam May Also Deny Family's Right To Body Of Their Mother, Nguyen Thi Hiep

The sons of a Canadian woman executed by a Vietnamese firing squad plan to
rescue their imprisoned grandmother and bring their mother's body home.

"We're trying to raise money so that my brother and I and my other 13
family members can go to Vietnam to give my mother a funeral," said Tu Le,
21, Nguyen Thi Hiep's youngest son. "I hate the Vietnamese government for
what they did."

"The Vietnamese government was leading us on. They betrayed us," he added
after a press conference held by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly
Convicted at the University Ave. offices of lawyer James Lockyer yesterday.

Nguyen, a 43-year-old Toronto woman who had been convicted by a Hanoi court
of smuggling 5.4 kilograms of heroin, was blindfolded, gagged and shot by a
firing squad at dawn Monday at the Thanh Xuan detention centre outside Hanoi.

Her execution took place despite international pleas for clemency from
Prime Minister Jean Chretien; Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy; U.S.
President Bill Clinton, who got involved through the intervention of boxing
great Rubin Hurricane Carter, executive director of the association for the
wrongly convicted; and Amnesty International, which put Nguyen on its
urgent action list.

Nguyen and her mother, Tran Thi Cam, 74, were both found guilty of
transporting heroin valued at about $5 million in a Hanoi court in March,
1997. The heroin was secreted in lacquered art panels they were carrying at
Hanoi's No Bai Airport on April 25, 1996. After their arrest Nguyen had
insisted they had been asked by a neighbour of a relative in Vietnam to
deliver the panels to Toronto.

Tran Thi Cam had gone to Vietnam to visit a young relative with cancer.

"Then my grandmother got sick while visiting relatives and my mother went
over to help her come back," Tu Le said.

Nguyen's case is similar to the case of another Vietnamese-born Toronto
woman, caught at about the same time at Pearson International Airport,
carrying heroin secreted in art panels. Police valued the drugs at about
$3.5 million, Superintendent Ron Taverner, of Toronto police special
investigations services, said yesterday.

Nguyen and her mother were offered $200 to carry the panels back, the
Toronto woman $100, police said.

The day Nguyen and her mother were arrested, the Toronto woman also caught
carrying heroin was freed in a University Ave. courtroom.

"Because of a police investigation, the woman caught in Toronto was found
to be an unsuspecting drug carrier and charges were withdrawn against her,"
Taverner said.

Police said the same man - Phu Hoa of Mississauga - links the two cases in
a drug smuggling operation between Vietnam and Toronto.

Hoa was jailed for 14 years. Two other men also received sentences.

Canadian officials and Toronto police are condemning the actions of the
Vietnamese government.

"We acted in good faith, and we feel we weren't taken in good faith,"
Taverner said yesterday.

Taverner said he sent letters to high-ranking Vietnamese officials.

The investigators had also prepared and sent to the Vietnamese authorities
a 50-page document on the international drug ring connecting the cases.

Now Nguyen's two sons are focused on bringing their mother's body home in
Canada and on freeing their 74-year-old grandmother.

They hope their pleas will free their mother's body from inside the walls
of the prison where she lies buried, and free their grandmother from the
cell where she is serving a life sentence.

"It's our belief, as an association, that she was innocent," Lockyer said.

Lockyer said he believed that Canada's foreign affairs department had "done
their utmost" to help Nguyen.

Before the week is out, her family will be lobbying Vietnamese authorities
and Canada's foreign affairs department to demand the return of Nguyen's
body, Lockyer said.

Nguyen is believed to be the only Canadian to have been executed on a
drug-related charge. Although Nguyen is a naturalized citizen, she was born
in Vietnam, which does not recognize dual citizenship. Her mother is a
landed immigrant.

Nguyen arrived in Canada with her family in the early '80s, and lived in
Montreal before moving to Toronto, where she spent about a year.

"We want to get my grandmother out of jail," Tu Le said.

"She's old and weak. She has asthma. We don't how long she'll live. We
really want her near us," Tu Le said.

Nguyen's body has been buried within the prison walls. Vietnamese law says
it must remain there for three years before it can be given to relatives,
Lockyer said.

"We say her body should be given to relatives now and not three years from
now," Lockyer said.

"It's really important for the family. Canada is where she belongs. Her
soul will rest happy here, much happier than if she were left in the wall
of the jail in Vietnam," Tu Le said yesterday.

"Madam Nguyen's mother must be released forthwith . . . We've got to get
her out soon," Lockyer said. She is serving her sentence at the Thanh Xuan
detention camp, about 30 kilometres outside of Hanoi.

Nguyen had been shackled in a rat-infested cell for four years and was not
allowed visitors other than the Canadian consul until last fall, Lockyer
said. But after lobbying by Carter's association, Nguyen became the first
person on Vietnam's death row to receive family visitors.

Her sons last visited their mother in March for 30-minutes.

"We had a lot of hope in those four years. They (the Vietnmase government)
just broke their promise," one of the brothers said.

She was executed "in absolute secrecy," protesting her innocence up to the
end, and refused to sign a statement of guilt, a spokesperson for the
foreign affairs department has said.

"She was very, very courageous in the last minutes," said her eldest son,
Trung Tri Le, 26.

Vietnam sent a note of assurance to the Canadian government last December
advising that the execution had been postponed until Toronto police had
investigated, Lockyer said.

"We backed off. We thought she was safe. Apparently we were wrong."

"The last time we saw my mother (in jail) she told me to go back home and
take care of everybody," Tu Le said yesterday. "I kept telling her
everybody was supporting her," he said.