LAOS SENTENCES AND DEPORTS RADICAL ACTIVISTS

the five members of the Transnational Radical Party were also ordered to pay fines of two million kip ($200) and costs of 5,000 kip (50 cents) after a three-hour trial in the capital, Vientiane, on Friday.
The five are Euro MP Olivier Dupuis, of Belgian nationality, Italians Silvja Manzi, Bruno Mellano and Massimo Lensi and Russian national Nikolai Kramov.
A court official told the Associated Press news agency that the detainees had already been handed over to their embassies.
Phaivi Siboripha, president of the three-judge panel, said the five had been found guilty of "propaganda against the Lao People´s Democratic Republic" which had "damaged the country´s stability and security".
They had faced a maximum five years in jail for interfering in Laos´s internal affairs.
The Laotian Government appears to have moved swiftly to avoid a diplomatic row with the European Union over the detained activists.
Laos, which is one of the poorest countries in Asia, could ill afford to risk losing any of the overseas aid which funds much of the government´s annual budget.
Romano Prodi, the president of the European Union´s executive commission, warned on Thursday that if Laos failed to quickly find a satisfactory solution to the case, its relations with the EU would be damaged.
They were arrested on 26 October in Vientiane after marking the second anniversary of a students´ democracy protest in Laos by displaying a banner and handing out leaflets.
Human rights groups say at least five Lao nationals involved in the 1999 protest are still being held without trial.
The communist regime, which has ruled Laos since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, tolerates no political dissent.
The French lawyer who visited the five Europeans at a detention centre on Wednesday said that they were in poor health, deprived of medicine and clean drinking water.
Klauspeter Schmallenbach, head of the European Commission delegation based in Bangkok in neighbouring Thailand, witnessed part of the trial and said the five had appeared calm and "seemed to be relieved".