Death Sentence On Politician

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32232, 26 February 1970, Page 11

Death Sentence On Politician

(N.Z.PA -Reuter—Copyright)

SAIGON, February 25. A South Vietnamese politician sentenced to death by a military court today for rebellion is said by his wife to have left for “a country in the free world.”

, The politician, Hoang Ho, a deputy in the Lower House, was sentenced in his absence.

Mrs Ho, who told reporters at the court that she had received a letter from him a few days ago, did not disclose his whereabouts. “The sentence is nonsense,” she said, Her husband, who is 54 and was a press spokesman for the former Head of' State, Mr Phan Khac Suu, in 1964, was accused of activities In support of the Communists. Another deputy, Tran Ngoc Chau, aged 46, was imprisoned today for 20 years for communicating with his brother, a Communist who was imprisoned in July for spying for North Vietnam. The court directed that Chau, a former chief of the province of Klen Hoa, should be arrested at the Lower House, where he has been staging a sit-in protest since Monday against the court proceedings. Chau was sitting in a small back room in the National Assembly building talking to reporters when a fellow-deputy came in to tell him of the sentence. “I’ve got 20 years and my property confiscated and pension taken away—2o years at hard labour. And it was the death sentence for Ho,” Mr Chau calmly told the reporters. Asked if he would go quietly or have to be forcibly carried out, he said: “I came here by the will of the people who elected me. If I get out of here I must be forced out by the bayonets.” He said the fact that he had

refused to flee proved him to be a nationalist. “I have never been a pro-Communist,” he declared. “1 have been a friend of America, but I refuse to serve the wrong policy that the American officials have in Vietnam, based as it is on force, foreign aid, and weapons.” Chau was later asked when he thought the Government would arrest him. He replied: “If they do so, they’ll certainly do it at night time, when many reporters are not awake,” A Government spokesman said that an official notification of the court’s verdict would be served on Chau,'and that then he would be arrested. There was no indication when this might be done.