Death penalty given to six drug traffickers
The People’s Court of northern Hoa Binh province on June 6 sentenced six members of a major drug trafficking ring to death.
They are the ringleaders of a 30-member gang that has been found guilty of trafficking 1,784 cakes of heroin weighing over 628kg and 1,400 synthetic drug pills.
Four of the traffickers are still on the run. Seven others were sentenced by the court to life imprisonment while the rest received from 3 to 25 years in prison on charges of smuggling drugs, resisting on-duty officers and illegally possessing military weapons.
The defendants were also forced to give the State the money they received from their illegal acts, totaling more than US$658,000.
According to the indictment, on May 18, 2011, local police surprised Trang A Chu, the ring’s kingpin, trafficking 50 cakes of heroin weighing over 17.6 kg and 400 synthetic drug pills.
Further investigation led police to arrest other members of Chu’s gang. They had been smuggling drugs from the northern mountainous provinces of Hoa Binh and Son La to Hanoi and the northern localities of Thai Nguyen, Cao Bang and Bac Giang.