Cyber-dissident gets a break
2003-08-26 11:10
Hanoi - A Vietnamese cyber-dissident and pro-democracy activist jailed for 13 years on espionage charges had his sentence reduced to five years in prison by the Supreme Court, a court official said on Tuesday.
The decision to cut the sentence of Pham Hong Son, a 34-year-old businessman and qualified medical doctor, by eight years was made after a one-day hearing, the official said.
Son, who was initially found guilty after a half-day trial at the Hanoi People's Court on June 18, will also have to serve three years under house arrest on his release, he said.
At his first trial, Son was charged with spying because he communicated by telephone and e-mail with "political opportunists" in Vietnam and overseas, and used e-mail to send anti-government and anti-Communist Party documents abroad.
His conviction triggered outrage within Vietnam's diplomatic community and among human rights groups, which charged Hanoi with sending a chilling warning to others seeking to harness the world wide web to criticise the regime.
It also provoked a stern denunciation from the US state department.
As was the case in the June trial, diplomats and foreign reporters were refused access to Tuesday's proceedings.
However, representatives from at least eight Western embassies gathered outside the court building in the driving rain.
Uniformed police ushered the small crowd 60m back from the main gate. Undercover intelligence police filmed the foreign nationals, while others tried to mingle among those gathered.
Son was arrested in the capital on March 27, 2002, a few weeks after translating and publishing online a feature entitled "What is democracy," extracted from the US state department's website.
He was the fifth dissident in the past year to be arrested and charged with crimes relating to e-mail communication or other internet activity.
- AFP