Pawning a car to smuggle 'goods' across the border, a young man lost his life

Dao Huu Phu (36 years old) from Phong Thinh commune, Thanh Chuong district is the eldest of three children. After only finishing 10th grade, Phu dropped out of school and found a job to support himself. When he reached adulthood, like many other young people, Phu got married and had children to stabilize his life. However, that marriage soon ended.

After a failed marriage, Phu gradually fell into drug addiction. Dao Huu Phu was sentenced to 33 months in prison for illegal possession of drugs. Having experienced prison, the young man still could not conquer the "brown fairy". More importantly, from being an addict, Phu gradually went deeper into the path of illegal drug trafficking despite knowing full well that he was doing it.violation of law

Drugs have blinded the young man living in the countryside. He is determined to earn illegal money from this illegal substance. That is also the reason why when he has no money to trade drugs, Phu is willing to borrow his friend's car and pawn it to get "goods" from the other side of the border.

According to the case file, within just 10 days (from April 17 to April 26, 2021), Dao Huu Phu contacted Lao people to order nearly 7.4 kg of drugs to resell for profit. Phu transferred 400 million VND to a Lao person's bank account to buy the above drugs.

In order to avoid detection by the police, Phu did not directly receive the "goods" but hired Nguyen Ngoc Nam (born in 1983, residing in Thanh Hoa commune, Thanh Chuong district) to go to Cau Treo border gate (Ha Tinh) to get the drugs. Nam agreed to carry out the task after being paid 50 million VND.

On April 26, 2021, under Phu's direction, Nam drove a car to receive drugs. In the afternoon of the same day, when Nam returned to Son Tay commune, Huong Son district (Ha Tinh), he was discovered and caught red-handed by the police.

While his underlings were going to receive the “goods”, Phu also drove a car behind to keep an eye on them. When he discovered that Nam was being arrested by the police, Phu immediately turned the car around and ran into a cemetery to hide but was later arrested by the police.

With an exceptionally large amount of drugs, the court of first instance sentenced the two defendants Dao Huu Phu and Nguyen Ngoc Nam to death for the crime of illegal drug trafficking. Defendant Phu then filed an appeal claiming his innocence. At the appeal hearing held by the High People's Court in Hanoi recently at the People's Court of Nghe An province, defendant Dao Huu Phu maintained his appeal.

The defendant told the jury that he was only addicted and did not buy or sell drugs as charged in the indictment. Phu stated that he did not have such a large amount of money to trade drugs. The defendant admitted to transferring money to an account but gave the reason that he worked in the money transfer service industry. In addition, Phu also said that the investigation agency's decision to convict him based on Nguyen Huu Nam's testimony was "unconvinced".

Although at the trial, the defendant did not admit to drug trafficking, the appellate court determined that, based on the self-confession, the transcript of the testimony, the record of the arrest of the offender in the act, and other documents and evidence that had been examined, there was sufficient basis to conclude that the defendant Dao Huu Phu had illegally traded in drugs. Given the large amount of drugs that the defendant had traded, the appellate court rejected the defendant's appeal and upheld the death sentence for Dao Huu Phu.

Although his appeal for innocence failed, Phu appeared quite calm. The defendant calmly put his hands in handcuffs and walked away with an incomprehensible smile. In contrast to the calmness of the defendant who received the death sentence was the crying of his mother and relatives behind him. That mother had given her son a beautiful body and life, but that son had given himself up to temptations because of illegal money from drugs. And now, what remains after the death sentence is a great pain deeply engraved in the mother's heart...