GREEN BERET CASE Relatives Consider Petition For Trial

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32073, 22 August 1969, Page 11

GREEN BERET CASE Relatives Consider Petition For Trial

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) LONG BINH, Aug, 21. The preliminary hearing of murder charges against the eight United States Special Forces men accused of killing a South Vietnamese civilian was resumed in camera at the United States Army headquarters today.

Reporters were allowed no closer than the barbed-wire barricade surrounding the giant stockade at the Long Binh camp, 15 miles northeast of Saigon. Yesterday two civilian counsel for the accused said that they thought the hearing would end today with the dis-

missal of the case on the ground of Insufficient evidence.

From Saigon it is reported that the wife and brother of a man they fear was the victim of the alleged murder have said that they may petition for a trial by a South Vietnamese court if the United States Army dismisses the case. The wife of Thai Khac Chuyen, aged 31, a North Viet-namese-born civilian interpreter who worked for the Special Forces, yesterday said that she last saw her husband on Friday, June 13. On the evening of that day, she received a hastily-scrib-bled note from him, which said: “My love, because of official business I will be gone for a few days. I shall return soon. Don’t worry. Keep yourself and our two children in good health.” Mr Chuyen’s wife, Pham Kim Lien, aged 30, said she first suspected that her husband was the victim three days ago, when she learnt that the name on the chargesheet was Chu Yen Thai Khac.

Both she and Mr Chuyen’s brother, Mr Thai Khac Chuong, at whose house in Saigon they spoke to reporters, said emphatically that Mr Chuyen was neither a spy nor a double-agent. Mr Chunong said: “We were refugees from the North in 1954. We left because there was no future for us there under a Communist regime. People like us can never be spies.” A former Army war reporter, he was asked what action his family planned if the United States Army dropped the case against the eight accused men. “If it is established that my

brother was the victim,” he replied, “the family will ask the Government to intercede with the United States Government for the accused men to be tried either by a Vietnamese court or a joint Viet-namese-United States court.”