EXECUTION SPURS CANADA TO REVIEW TIES WITH HANOI

Civil-rights Advocates Feel Betrayed By Actions Of Vietnamese Officials

Years of quiet diplomacy failed to save Nguyen Thi Hiep from the bullets of
a Vietnamese firing squad. Now, with the full support of the Canadian
government, the grieving family is loudly seeking to have her body, still
inside prison walls, returned to Canada.

"I hate the government, the Vietnamese government, because they broke their
promises. They're just so cruel," Ms. Nguyen's 21-year-old son, Tu Le, said
yesterday.

His mother, a Vietnamese Canadian, was arrested four years ago for heroin
smuggling and was executed Monday by firing squad.

Her two sons, her sister, Nguyen Lien The, and other family members
expressed their grief at a press conference yesterday.

In a few weeks, family members hope to visit Ms. Nguyen's 74-year-old
mother and plead for her release from a Hanoi prison. Tran Thi Cam was
arrested along with her daughter. Now serving a life sentence, she is
asthmatic and losing her eyesight and still doesn't know her daughter is dead.

The dead woman's family and civil-rights officials said they thought they
had secured a stay of execution until Vietnam could review evidence from
Canada. They were not the only ones yesterday expressing feelings of anger
and betrayal.

"This unwarranted action by the Vietnamese government does not, and cannot,
allow for the continuation of business as usual between our countries,"
Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy said in a statement from Africa
yesterday.

All aspects of Canada's relationship with Vietnam will be reviewed and
Canada's ambassador to Hanoi, Cecile Lanoi, who is currently in Canada,
will remain here until that review is completed, Mr. Axworthy said.

Canadian officials in Vietnam have been ordered to boycott all
state-sponsored celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the end of the

Vietnam War. Canada has also withdrawn its offer to instruct Vietnamese
officials on how to join the World Trade Organization.

Mr. Axworthy sent a letter to the Vietnamese foreign minister, Nguyen Dy
Nien, supporting the family's request that Ms. Nguyen's body be returned,
although convention dictates that it remain at the prison for three years.

The Canadian minister also asked that Ms. Nguyen's mother be released on
humanitarian grounds.

In Hanoi, Canadian embassy officials said they were given no warning of the
execution. "It came as a complete shock. We weren't informed, it just
suddenly happened," said one official who declined to be named. "For the
moment, she's been buried in the prison yard. We're trying to get the
family back the remains."

There was no mention of the execution or the consequent diplomatic furor in
the government-controlled Vietnamese press yesterday.

Ms. Nguyen was arrested when customs officials at a Hanoi airport found
heroin hidden in paintings in her luggage. On Monday, the Vietnamese
government ordered her executed by firing squad. In doing so, the
government apparently reneged on a promise to review an investigation by
Toronto Police that indicates a crime organization duped her into carrying
drugs in ignorance.

That promise was secured behind the scenes, because Canadian officials
feared publicity would have imperilled Ms. Nguyen.

"Whether that was the right thing to do, we'll never know," a dispirited
James Lockyer, director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly
Convicted, said yesterday.

The sons said their last memory of their 43-year-old mother was at the
Hanoi prison. One arm was unshackled so she could grip a telephone and talk
to her family through a window. The visits were very painful, they said.

"We tried to get her happy and smiling through the 20 minutes, half an hour
that we had. [We'd] just tell her stories."

Vietnam, like the United States, views itself mired in a protracted war on
drugs. Ms. Nguyen's arrest was originally cited as proof that government
crackdown was working.

The state-controlled Vietnamese media called it "the case where White Death
was found in the black care of lacquerance," a reference to the lacquer
paintings where the drug was found. When Ms. Nguyen and her mother were
arrested, it was the biggest drug bust on record by Vietnamese customs
officers.

In April, 1996, Ms. Nguyen and Ms. Tran were stopped in a Hanoi airport en
route to Toronto. Their baggage contained five lacquer paintings containing
5 kilograms of powdered heroin. Ms. Nguyen originally denied knowing she
had the paintings, but later said the terror of being arrested caused her
to do so.

She then told authorities that a Hanoi shoe salesman had asked her to bring
the artwork to Phu Van Hoa, a friend of her husband who lived in
Mississauga. She was given $100 to cover transportation costs.

Mr. Phu was later convicted of drug trafficking after a Toronto Police
sting operation.

Ms. Tran still doesn't know about her daughter's death.

"We try to keep the bad news away from her," Tu Le said. "She's old right
now. So far, ever since she's been there, the government hasn't let her out
to go to a hospital. . . . So far, she's sick inside and she can barely see
with the light."

Raymond Chan, Canada's secretary of state to the Asia-Pacific region, said
he was "personally offended and angry" at the execution.

"For them to do this, out of the blue, even secretly, is completely out of
line," he said. He said Vietnamese officials wouldn't even confirm the
execution for two days.

Ms. Nguyen's sons said yesterday that they thought the Canadian government
had done everything it could, keeping their mother alive longer than had
been expected.

A 1997 article from the Vietnam Courier refers to the case as proof the
state is fighting the drug trade.

"Most officials interviewed about how to cope with drug addiction and
trafficking stressed preventive measures," the article reads. "Imposing
severe punishment on drug traffickers is also an effective measure." It
then goes on to outline the punishments handed out to Ms. Nguyen and her
mother.

Ms. Nguyen's family had known happier times when they first came to Canada
in the mid-1980s. She worked in a garment factory; her husband washed
dishes. It was a normal family, her sons said yesterday.

COUNTDOWN TO DEATH

Nguyen Thi Hiep was executed on Monday despite her repeated protestations
of innocence and the Canadian government's appeals for clemency.

April, 1996 Ms. Nguyen and her mother are arrested for smuggling 5((
kilograms of heroin through a Hanoi airport. Half a world away, another
Vietnamese-Canadian seamstress is caught with similar drug-filled artwork
at Toronto's Pearson Airport.

March, 1997 Ms. Nguyen is sentenced to death.

August, 1997 Ms. Nguyen's appeal fails.

June, 1999 Having concluded that the woman in the Pearson bust was duped,
police successfully carry out a sting operation and arrest Phu Hoa, 44, of
Mississauga, who is later sentenced to 14 years. Two associates get lesser
sentences. The detectives contact the Association in Defence of the Wrongly

Convicted about Ms. Nguyen's case.

September, 1999 The association and two Toronto Police officers meet the
Vietnamese ambassador. Six days later, Ms. Nguyen's husband visits her in
jail. Visits by her sons follow.

December, 1999 Former boxer and convict Rubin (Hurricane) Carter meets U.S.
President Bill Clinton in the White House for a screening of the film

The Hurricane. The men discuss Ms. Nguyen's case.

January Ms. Nguyen is granted a temporary stay of execution. Canadians
relax their efforts, hoping a meeting with Toronto Police detectives will
exonerate Ms. Nguyen. The meeting never occurs.

April 24 Ms. Nguyen is executed without warning, tied to a pole. She
proclaims her innocence moments before she dies.

April 27 Canada's Foreign Minister places all diplomatic relations with
Vietnam under review. Her family pleas for the return of her body and the
freeing of her mother from jail.

'WHAT WAS INSIDE?'

Nguyen Thi Hiep was executed for smuggling drugs hidden in artwork. But a
woman arrested in Toronto in a similar case was found by police to have
been innocently duped. With her co-operation, police placed a wiretap on
her phone. When she was contacted by a man linked to an organized crime
ring, the conversations were recorded.

(An edited conversation, translated from Vietnamese, follows. The parties
are not named as police have asked that the woman not be identified and no
charges were brought against the contact.)

Woman: What is it inside the package? There were some pictures but then
when I was returning from the airport a friend of mine saw it. Because it
was too heavy he decided to bring that to his house. . . . Do you need it?

Contact: Yes, I do need it.

Woman: But what are they?

Contact: Those are the . . . the lacquer paintings.

Woman: He said that it was too heavy and he decided to keep it. . . . He
said if you want to take it back you have to pay extra money. I am not sure

whether he is joking or not. But I do not know what they are. . . . What
was inside? (A later conversation follows)

Woman: He took them home . . . he dropped them and he saw that there seemed
to be some drug. He says that if you want to take it back . . . you have
to give him $5,000.

Contact: Oh God, they were just lacquer paintings but nothing else. No I
had no knowledge. . . .