THE TORONTO WOMAN ON DEATH ROW

Canadians Used As Unwitting Drug Mules, Police Say

A Toronto woman sentenced to die by firing squad has been kept in shackles
in a Hanoi jail cell for the past three years after being found guilty of
smuggling drugs in Vietnam.

But Toronto police say she and her mother were likely duped into smuggling
drugs. And federal officials feel the sentence is too harsh.

Nguyen Thi Hiep, 42, is the only Canadian in the world known to be facing a
death sentence after being convicted on drug charges, police and federal
government officials say.

The court in Hanoi sentenced Nguyen to die and her 74-year-old mother, Tran
Thi Cam, to prison for life. Another Toronto woman caught in similar
circumstances, but at Pearson International Airport, was cleared of all
charges. Police say the same man - Phu Hoa of Mississauga - links the two
cases in a drug smuggling operation between Vietnam and Toronto in which
innocent women were unwittingly used to carry drugs or act as mules. Both
heroin shipments were destined for Phu Hoa.

Nguyen and her mother told the court during their trial in March, 1997, they
were unaware that 5.4 kilograms of heroin was concealed in Oriental art
panels they were carry ing at Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport. Nguyen insists they
had been asked by the neighbour of a relative in Vietnam to deliver the
panels to a man living in Toronto.

"I was not carrying the heroin," Nguyen testified. "Why are they deciding to
kill me like that?"

But the court considered the drugs Nguyen and her mother were carrying,
valued by police at $5 million, to be overwhelming evidence.

The court turned a deaf ear to Nguyen's claims of innocence.

"My personal opinion from all the information I have is that Nguyen was
being used by an organized group of drug traffickers," says Superintendent
Ron Taverner, head of Toronto police special investigation services.

"We have endeavoured to speak with Vietnamese officials to make them aware.
But so far our information has been poorly received."

Since the court imposed the sentences, family members have exhausted all
legal avenues available to save Nguyen and her mother. They can only hope
the Vietnamese government shows compassion and intervenes.

"So far, appeals for executive clemency have not been answered," says
Michael O'Shaughnessy of the foreign affairs department in Ottawa.

The federal government, he states, does not believe a conviction for drug
trafficking is serious enough to warrant the death penalty.

Although Nguyen is a naturalized Canadian, she was born in Vietnam, a
country that does not recognize dual citizenship. Her mother is a landed
immigrant who came to Canada in 1994 as a refugee.

Nguyen's final hope is that the president of Vietnam will commute her
sentence after considering various pleas from Canada, including a personal
appeal in the fall of 1997 from Prime Minister Jean Chritien.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy also wrote a letter in August, 1997,
to his Vietnamese counterpart. And in January, 1998, Raymond Chan, secretary
of state in Asia-Pacific matters, visited Vietnam's deputy minister of
foreign affairs requesting mercy.

Family members here, including her two adult sons, a sister and brother,
feel helpless.

"We don't know what to do," said Nguyen's older sister Lien, 44, who made a
trip to Vietnam last year and visited her ailing mother in a detention
centre outside Hanoi. She wasn't allowed to see her sister.

"I'm afraid she will be shot," said Lien, who also fears her mother will die
in prison. "My mother is so frail."

Nguyen's husband Tran Hieu also went to Vietnam after she was arrested but
was never allowed to see her. He's still in Vietnam.

Nguyen's story is similar to the case of another Vietnamese-born Toronto
woman who was caught around the same time at Pearson airport with heroin
police valued at $3.5 million.

In both cases the women were asked to carry decorative lacquered wood panels
for delivery to Phu Hoa. The heroin hidden in the wood panels in both cases
was packaged in clear plastic bags .62 centimetres thick, 10 cms wide and 20
to 25 cms long.

The women were given a small amount of money to cover the excess baggage
fees for the heavy packages. Nguyen and her mother said they were given
$200. The woman caught at Pearson said she was given $100.

Both Nguyen and the woman caught at Pearson had worked as seamstresses at
downtown Toronto clothing manufacturers, saving money to return to Hanoi to
visit relatives, their families say.

But the 40-year-old woman caught at Pearson met a far luckier fate than
Nguyen. She was cleared by a Toronto police investigation known as Project
Pigeon, launched by Detective Carl Noll and Detective Constable John Green
of the heroin unit.

Green, who travelled to Vietnam to try to interview Nguyen as part of
Toronto's investigation, said: "We have to investigate further before we can
clear Nguyen."

On condition of anonymity and using the pseudonym Lalie, the Toronto woman
told two Star reporters how she was duped into carrying heroin into Canada.
Since she isn't comfortable speaking English, her eldest daughter, a Grade
12 student at a Toronto high school, translated.

Lalie's nightmare began March 31, 1996, after meeting three strangers who
sat next to her on a Cathay Pacific flight from Toronto to Vietnam.

She was going home to see her ailing mother who lives on the family farm.
She'd come to Canada 14 years ago, and it was her first trip out of Ontario.

A Canadian citizen since 1990, she had saved the money she made working
nine-hour days as a factory seamstress for 14 years to spend on gifts for
her mother and cousin in Vietnam.

As she boarded the plane, two Vietnamese-speaking men and a woman sat next
to her and befriended her during the 18-hour flight from Toronto to the Far
East.

The 50-year-old man beside her said he was the boss of a supermarket in
downtown Kitchener. Behind her sat the other man, Tran Ly, and a 19-year-old
woman, named Duyen, who said her boyfriend bought her a ticket home to Vietnam.

They said they were from Ho Chi Minh City. They asked her about her life,
her family and where they lived in Vietnam and in Toronto. They spent time
together during the seven-hour layover in Hong Kong. They suggested they
take photos and exchange addresses. Although Lalie said she was
"uncomfortable," she exchanged addresses with them.

A few days after her arrival, Tran Ly phoned. He phoned three times. On the
third call, he asked her to deliver four lacquered art panels "for a friend"
in Toronto. He said he was "caught up" in business and unable to take the
panels back himself.

Lalie said she did it for him because "Vietnamese people help each other."

When it was time to return to Canada, Tran Ly appeared at Hanoi's Noi Bai
Airport carrying the art panels wrapped in a white nylon bag as Lalie waited
for her flight.

He gave her a $100 Canadian bill to cover the cost of the heavy art boards,
an Islington Ave. address and a phone number of a person to contact.

The address was phony, but the telephone number later helped police catch
the men who duped Lalie into carrying the heroin.

"I'll see you in Canada," Tran Ly told her as she left to board the plane.

Lalie was arrested at Pearson on April 19, 1996.

She was charged with importing $3.5 million worth of heroin.

"I remember everything," she recalls. "I wrote it all down like a diary. It
was the most horrible moment ... the turning point" upon the realization
that she could face years in prison.

Shocked and confused, Lalie told the uniformed customs officers the panels
didn't belong to her. She told them she knew nothing about the heroin. She
was only carrying the panels as a favour "for a friend."

Two undercover officers took Lalie to a small room where they interrogated
her, ordered her to open her suitcase and pull out her clothing.

Lalie sorted through her suitcase while her worried family waited for her to
come through the arrivals area. They finally paged her to meet them.

But instead of Lalie, they were approached by two police officers who took
the oldest of her three daughters to a small room where Lalie sat huddled on
a chair shaking and crying. Her suitcase was open on the floor, clothes
strewn everywhere.

On a table, Lalie's daughter saw four art panels, pried open to reveal white
powder in plastic bags. Police told Lalie's daughter it was heroin.

"They told me my mom had imported heroin ... I was shocked ... I almost had
a heart attack." Lalie's daughter pleaded with police that there must be
some mistake.

Lalie was held at the West Detention Centre for five nights before getting
bail. Her brother-in-law posted $50,000 bail, putting his own house up as
collateral. Lalie was finally cleared and set free on April 25, 1996.

"The next time I saw Tran Ly," Lalie continues, "he was in court, in
handcuffs sitting in the prisoner's box." It was Aug. 7, 1998, at old city
hall. The last time she saw him was when she testified for one hour at his
trial that ended last month.

"When I went up to the stand to testify, he looked shocked,'' Lalie says
through her daughter. ``They asked me if the man who gave me the package was
in the courtroom. I pointed to Ly. He just stared at me.''

Green felt proud that the heroin unit was able to clear Lalie.

``She could have spent 14 years in prison," the officer says. "She got this
stuff to Toronto. Had she got caught over there, she could have been
executed by a firing squad for being totally innocent."

The same day Lalie was freed in a Toronto courtroom, Nguyen and her mother
were arrested in Hanoi.

Nguyen continues to await her fate on death row at the Xuan Phuong detention
centre on the outskirts of Hanoi. The prison, according to Foreign Affairs
officials, is rat-infested. Her mother is serving her life sentence at the
Thanh Xuan detention camp, about 30 kilometres outside of Hanoi.

Green said the heroin unit would like "the same opportunity to examine
Nguyen's case." From their investigations so far, Green and Noll believe
Nguyen may have been unaware of the hidden heroin.

When the family came to Canada in 1985 as refugees, Nguyen and her husband
opened a Vietnamese restaurant in Montreal. They moved to Toronto in 1995
and lived at Phu's home before finding an apartment.

In a statement to Vietnamese police, Nguyen said she trusted Phu because he
and his wife had also been to Christmas dinner at her house years ago when
she and her husband lived in Vietnam. Nguyen was to take the screens to a
man in Toronto called Va Ty, a nickname for Phu Hoa, who was also a friend
of her husband's.

During his 10-day trip to Vietnam in April, 1997, Green, with the help of
Brian Williams, RCMP liaison attache in Bangkok, met with Interpol and Hanoi
drug investigators who provided copies of Nguyen's statement and other
information about the case which led to her death sentence.

But the refusal by Vietnamese government officials to allow Green to speak
with Nguyen foiled his attempt to get evidence firmly connecting both cases
and determine her innocence.

"They said the courts wouldn't allow me to meet with her," Green said. "She
had already been convicted. She was already on death row."

Green has not given up trying to see her. He is still hoping to get an
agreement between Vietnamese authorities and the Canadian justice department
so he can interview her in prison.

Phu and two other men were arrested on charges of trafficking in heroin
based on evidence collected during the Project Pigeon probe.

Last month, Phu, 44, was jailed for 14 years after admitting his role in the
drug smuggling operation.

Tran Ly, 41, and Chu Dong, 43, were also found guilty at a two-week jury
trial last month. They will be sentenced later this month at the Superior
Court of Justice on University Ave.