Pubdate: Fri, 01 Sep 2000
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2000 The Toronto Star
Contact:  One Yonge St., Toronto ON, M5E 1E6
Fax: (416) 869-4322
Website: http://www.thestar.com/
Forum: http://www.thestar.com/editorial/disc_board/
Page: A2
Author: Dale Anne Freed, Staff Reporter
Bookmark: additional articles on heroin are available at 
http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm

VIETNAM SET TO FREE WOMAN

Unaware Of Daughter's Execution

A Brampton woman was to be freed from her Vietnamese prison today, still 
unaware that her daughter was executed four months ago.

As the family of 74-year-old Tran Thi Cam holds a planned reunion at an 
amnesty celebration at her Thanh Xuan jail this afternoon, they will also 
be mourning the unexpected execution in April of Nguyen Thi Hiep.

"I feel happy and sad and all mixed up," said Tran Hieu, 56, Nguyen's 
husband. Like the rest of her family, he won't tell his mother-in-law about 
the execution because he thinks the news would kill her.

"I will keep that secret as long as I can," Tran said in a telephone 
interview from Hanoi, translated by his stepson Trung Le. "I will break the 
news to her gradually that her daughter is dead."

Tran Thi Cam, a Canadian landed immigrant, is one of 10,408 prisoners held 
in Vietnamese prisons to be released in honour of Vietnam's National Day 
Sept. 2.

Nguyen and her mother had said they were innocent when they were caught 
carrying 5.4 kilos of heroin in decorative lacquered panels at Hanoi's Noi 
Bai airport on April 25, 1996.

The 43-year-old Toronto seamstress is the only Canadian ever to be executed 
on drug charges anywhere. She faced the firing squad April 25.

Meanwhile, officials in Ottawa are still trying to determine what, if 
anything, they could have done to prevent Nguyen's execution, after 
learning from The Star yesterday that her husband made two frantic phone 
calls to a translator at the Canadian embassy in Hanoi on April 24.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy has asked for an accounting in "a 
review of all written and oral communications which took place in the hours 
leading up to her death," spokesperson Reynald Doiron said.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Thunder