Death penalty for drug dealer

On March 30, Nghe An Provincial People's Court opened a first-instance criminal trial of defendant Nguyen Khac Trung (born 1970), residing in Kim Son town (Que Phong) for the crime of ""Illegal drug trafficking".

Trung is a defendant with a bad personal history. In 1996, Nguyen Khac Trung was sentenced to 11 years in prison for "Abuse of trust to appropriate property". Then, in 2003 and 2012, Trung was sentenced to 11 years and 10 years in prison respectively for "Illegal drug trafficking".

Defendant Nguyen Khac Trung was sentenced to death. Photo: Tran Vu

In August 2019, Trung completed his sentence. But less than a year after his release, he returned to his old ways.

According to the case file, around mid-September 2020, Nguyen Khac Trung went to Ha Tinh to visit and met Van, who ordered 3 heroin cakes and 50 packages of pink phien for 700 million VND. This woman gave Trung 100 million VND in advance.

Trung took the money and then contacted Tua (a Laotian) to buy drugs. Tua quoted a price of 400 million VND. On September 29, Trung went to the edge of the forest in Tien Phong commune (Que Phong) to buy and sell drugs. After returning home, Trung hid the drugs in a music speaker and a plastic can.

This morning, Trung rented a car to take him to Dong Hoi City (Quang Binh) to deliver drugs to a customer, but was arrested by the police at the Truong Banh intersection, Tien Phong commune. The evidence in the case was more than 2 kg of drugs.

In court, the defendant admitted to drug trafficking. Defendant Trung said that because he had no stable job after being released from prison, he chose the last resort of drug trafficking.

With an exceptionally large amount of drugs and a bad personal history, the People's Court sentenced Nguyen Khac Trung to death.