German protest over ‘kidnap’ of Vietnamese asylum seeker

THE kidnapping of a Vietnamese former oil executive in Berlin is reminiscent of Cold War spy movies, Germany said yesterday, as it threatened measures against Hanoi over the abduction.

Sigmar Gabriel, the foreign minister, said that Germany had asked a Vietnamese intelligence officer at the embassy in Berlin to leave the country as it believes he was involved in the kidnapping of Trinh Xuan Thanh.

“We didn’t beg him to leave but rather we demanded that he leave because we strongly believe he is a person who was involved in kidnapping,” Mr Gabriel told a news conference after talks in Wolfsburg with Miroslav Lajcak, the Slovak foreign minister.

“There is nothing to contradict this assumption, but rather everything supports this assumption that he, with the help of the Vietnamese secret service and using his residence in the Vietnamese embassy in Germany, abducted a person who had asked for asylum,” Mr Gabriel added.

A foreign ministry spokesman declined to say if the unnamed officer, who had been given 48 hours to leave Germany, had already returned to Vietnam. Mr Gabriel did not elaborate on the kind of punitive measures Germany was considering.

Germany is Vietnam’s biggest trading partner in the European Union, whose countries are due to consider approving a free-trade agreement with the country. Vietnamese officials had requested Mr Thanh’s extradition on the margins of the G20 summit, when Nguyen Xuan Phuc, the prime minister, met German chancellor Angela Merkel. Vietnam claims Mr Thanh had voluntarily returned home.