AUSTRALIA. GOVERNMENT TO PLEAD FOR DRUG SMUGGLER FACING FIRING SQUAD IN VIETNAM

the Australian federal government said it would plead for the life of Mai Cong Thanh, an Australian sentenced to death in Vietnam for conspiring to smuggle heroin.
Mai, 46, was sentenced to death by firing squad in Ho Chi Minh City People's Court on June 9, two years after his arrest for having conspired with two other Australian nationals to smuggle heroin from Vietnam to Australia. Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison said the government would pull out all stops to ensure the death penalty was not carried out.
"I say that as is usual, the Australian government will make earnest pleas, very strong pleas to the Vietnamese government that the death penalty not be carried out.
"We've done this with other Australian nationals who have faced a sentence of death in Vietnam and Singapore and of course in relation to Indonesia as well”. Mai and one of his two Australian accomplices, who is also of Vietnamese origin, were arrested at Saigon Port in May 2003 with nearly 2kg of heroin.