Vietnam courts overturn death penalty for Nigerian drug mule

Xinhua News Agency
A court in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City reduced a death sentence previously handed to a Nigerian man for bringing methamphetamine into Vietnam to life imprisonment, local online newspaper Thanh Nien (Young People) News reported Tuesday.

The indictment on Monday said Ejiogu Benjamin Ikechukwu had nearly 3.3 kilograms of the drug in metal tubes and a laptop charger in his luggage as he flew to the city-based Tan Son Nhat Airport in June 2012. He had transited in Qatar.

The 33-year-old man said he only planned to go to Vietnam to buy clothes to resell them in Nigeria and had no idea about the drug in his luggage. He said a man asked him to carry the tubes and the charger to Vietnam and someone would pick them up.

A Ho Chi Minh court in August 2013 sentenced him to death, but he applied for an appeal. The People's Supreme Court then canceled the verdict, ordering a new investigation. Investigators could not track down the people who had used him as a drug mule.

Those convicted of smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine in Vietnam face death penalty. The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is also punishable by the death penalty.