an appeals court in central Vietnam upheld a death sentence

an appeals court in central Vietnam upheld a death sentence given last year to a local man for illegally carrying six kilograms of heroin and 12,000 ecstasy pills from Laos to Vietnam. Vietnamese border soldiers arrested Mua Ba Tu, 28, on July 18 last year when he was transporting the drugs across the Laos-Vietnam frontier to his hometown Nghe An Province, according to the indictment. Earlier a first instance court in the same province imposed the capital punishment on Tu on December 26, 2012. He then submitted an appeal for a commutation to life imprisonment.