Vietnam drug smugglers sentenced to death over heroin haul

HANOI: Vietnam has sentenced nine drug traffickers to death for smuggling nearly 500 kilogrammes of heroin into the country from Laos, a local government report said yesterday.

Nine others were jailed for life over the massive drug bust and ‘all illegal profits were seized’, according to the official newspaper of the Hoa Binh provincial government.

The traffickers smuggled the drugs from neighbouring Laos for resale in China and pocketed 670,000 between 2012 and 2016, according to a separate report by the state-run Vietnam News Agency which gave no further details.

Communist Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest anti- drug laws.

Anyone found guilty of possessing more than 600 grams of heroin, or more than 20 kilogrammes of opium, can face the death penalty.

The ‘Golden Triangle’ region covering parts of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar is one of the world’s top producers of opium, and heroin and other drugs are often smuggled into Vietnam from the region. — AFP