Nguyen Van Dai's wife petitions court

Vu Minh Khanh, wife of Hanoi lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, has petitioned the Vietnam Supreme Court to vacate the court sentence given to her husband of four years in jail followed by four years house arrest. The pro-democracy activist was declared guilty of "spreading propaganda against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam," in violation of Article 89 of Vietnam's Criminal Code. In her appeal she noted numerous irregularities in the police procedure leading to his arrest (along with his colleague Le Thi Cong Nhan), and in the subsequent court procedure by the court of first instance and court of appeals, procedures which did not even conform to the rather meager protections allowed defendants under Vietnam's Criminal Procedure Code. She concluded:

"It’s worth noting that only ONE of the four grounds is required for cassation whereas all FOUR grounds of this article are violated in my husband’s case. They are: shallow inquiries and interro-gations; inconsistency of court decisions with the objectivity of circumstances; grave violations of criminal procedures; grave mistakes in the application of the Criminal Code.

"It is, THEREFORE, by virtue of Article 274, Code of Criminal Procedure, that I am petitioning to the Chief Justice of the Supreme People’s Court and the Procurator-General of the Supreme People’s Procuracy for a protest according to cassation procedures. Considering the above grave violations,

my husband has been unjustly sentenced. In view of the fact that my husband has been imprisoned for more than 14 months, I hereby petition to the Court of Cassation for a speedy review of my husband’s case. I also suggest that the Court of Cassation record in my hus-band’s sentences specific evidences and arguments to avoid ambiguous decisions that had been reached at previous trials."

Source: Doi Thoai website.