VIETNAM. AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER APPEALS TO VIETNAM FOR CLEMENCY FOR AUSTRALIANS ON DEATH ROW

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he had appealed to Vietnam for clemency for two Australians facing the death penalty for drug smuggling.
Downer said he raised the matter with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings in the Lao capital Vientiane.
"There are two Australians who are on death row in Vietnam and I raised with the Vietnamese minister this issue and said that the Australian government would like to see clemency extended to these two people," he told reporters. Mai Cong Thanh, 46, an Australian of Vietnamese descent, had been sentenced to death in June, two years after his arrest on charges of smuggling heroin from Vietnam to Australia. Another Australian of Vietnamese origin, 45-year-old Nguyen Van Chinh, was also facing the death penalty for drug smuggling.