HANOI: Three high-profile Vietnamese bloggers, including one whose case has been raised by US President Barack Obama, are set to go on trial on Monday for “anti-state propaganda”, a lawyer said yesterday.
Nguyen Van Hai, alias Dieu Cay, who has been in detention since September 2008, will go on trial alongside Phan Thanh Hai and policewoman-turned-dissident Ta Phong Tan, lawyer Ha Huy Son said yesterday.
“They will be tried under article 88 of the Criminal Code”, which covers conducting propaganda against the one-party communist state and carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, said Son, who will represent Dieu Cay.
The trial has been repeatedly postponed, most recently in August after Tan’s mother committed suicide by setting herself on fire in front of a local authority building to protest the detention of her daughter, who was arrested in 2011.
Phan Thanh Hai, who blogs under the name Anhbasg, was arrested in 2010.
Nguyen Van Hai was arrested in 2008 and jailed for 2.5 years that September for tax fraud.
Experts said his closed-door trial was likely punishment for his criticism of the government’s handling of tensions with Beijing over the South China Sea.
AFP
