THIRTY-FIVE MAN SQUAD EXECUTES VIETNAM DRUGS GANG

By HANOI, March 3 (Reuters) - Vietnam carried out its second major
execution of the year on Tuesday before hundreds of people, in a grim
demonstration of state resolve to punish abuses of power and drugs
trafficking.

Vu Xuan Truong, a former police captain with the country's powerful
Interior Ministry, and six accomplices -- including a woman -- were shot
dead shortly before daybreak at an execution site on the outskirts of the
capital Hanoi.

In a rare concession the authorities had bowed to a request by Truong on
Monday that the killings be carried out before first light. Prison sources
and other witnesses said the seven were woken in their cells at around 2:30
a.m. local time.

As they were taken to be formally notified that they were to be executed,
Truong shouted to his wife, held in a neighbouring prison compound: ``My
love. I am going there.'' They were offered noodle soup, coffee and
cigarettes. All but one person was said to have refused.

After writing final letters to their families they were taken to the
execution field where a large crowd had gathered to witness their deaths.

Two of them -- a woman, Lai Thi Ngan and Dao Xuan Xe, the gang's driver --
were reported to be highly distressed. Xe, who had left his cell without
socks, was castigated by his colleagues for failing to consider his family.

Under Vietnamese tradition bodies are re-buried after about three years and
clothing helps to hold together the skeletal remains. They were then lined
up, blind-folded, tied tightly to wooden stakes, and shot dead by a 35-man
firing squad -- five men for each of the condemned.

Tuesday's executions bring a close to the latest chapter in a drugs-scandal
which has exposed the involvement of senior police officers and border
officials in a crime syndicate said to have flooded Vietnam with hundreds
of kilos of heroin.

The affair came to light after a convicted Laotian trafficker broke down
shortly before he was to be executed in 1996 and offered to exchange
information in return for his life being spared.

Over the months that followed Vietnam's state press reported lurid detail
including evidence hinting at official involvement.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the court in May last year to hear
sentencing. Eight people were condemned to death and fourteen others given
a range of jail terms. A further man was sentenced to death at a subsequent
trial in August. One of the nine had her sentence commuted to life last
month.

Analysts say the case, and an execution in January of lead culprits in a
separate scandal involving Communist Party-affiliated firm Tamexco, have
political overtones. Both cases have been used to demonstrate Hanoi's
public resolve to tackle abuses in a system which party officials openly
concede is afflicted by problems of influence peddling and corruption.