Nguyen Thi Hiep, a Canadian citizen of Vietnamese origin...

Nguyen Thi Hiep, a Canadian citizen of Vietnamese origin was executed in Hanoi, where she was arrested in 1996 for drug trafficking, a court spokesmen said. Nguyen, 42, was executed by a firing squad after the Hanoi courts rejected an appeal to commute her sentence to life imprisonment. This was the first execution of a Western citizen since Vietnam established the death penalty in 1997 to combat drug trafficking and consumption.