EXTRADITION HEARING
Court gives Ly Tong to Vietnam
Ly Tong, a South Vietnamese air force veteran who later became a US citizen, gestures from his cell at Bangkok Criminal Court yesterday.
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Hanoi to prosecute the former South Vietnamese for invading its air space
The Criminal Court yesterday decided to extradite Vietnamese dissident Ly Tong, who is wanted in Hanoi in connection with violating airspace after he flew a small plane from Thailand and dumped 50,000 anticommunist leaflets over Ho Chi Minh City in 2000. Thailand's 1929 Extradition Law prohibits returning people accused of political crimes to face punishment in other countries, but the court ruled that Tong was not facing a political charge. The South Vietnamese air force veteran, who later became a US citizen, flew a twin-engine plane from Hua Hin Airport in November 2000. His leaflet-dropping stunt coincided with a visit to Vietnam by then-US President Bill Clinton. Tong was arrested after making a forced landing at U-Tapao Air Force base and later sentenced to five years in prison here. Hanoi made a request for the dissident's extradition in December 2004 seeking to prosecute him for endangering Vietnamese security. As long as the prosecutor provided sufficient evidence to show that the Vietnamese government would not punish him for a political charge, it was unnecessary to consider whether Tong's activity was a political action, the court said. Tong expressed his disappointment with the court's decision and said he would appeal. "I don't want to appeal. I want to go to fight in Vietnam, but my supporters want me to fight in court," he told reporters after the verdict. Lawyer Worasit Piriyawiboon said his client would appeal within 15 days to argue that territory violation is a political charge, not a normal crime. "We will make an argument to the appeals court that Tong's action of flying a plane to drop leaflets is a political activity," he said. Tong was a pilot for South Vietnamese forces before the fall of Saigon in 1975. His anticommunist activities began in 1992 when he forced a Vietnam Airlines plane to fly over Ho Chi Minh City to allow him to drop leaflets calling for an uprising against the Hanoi government. He then parachuted from the plane before being arrested and jailed for 20 years. He was granted amnesty and freed in 1998. In January 2000, he dropped anticommunist leaflets over Cuba.
Supalak Ganjanakhundee The Nation
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