HUE, Vietnam -- A court sentenced a dissident Catholic priest to eight years in prison yesterday for anti-government activities after a dramatic trial in which the defendant shouted denunciations of the ruling Communist Party.

A judge at Thua Thien Hue Provincial People's Court in central Vietnam sentenced the Rev. Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly on charges of disseminating anti-government documents and communicating with pro-democracy activists overseas. It was the first time the government has opened a high-profile dissident's trial to reporters.

Authorities said Father Ly, 60 -- who has been jailed twice before for hiis pro-democracy activities -- was plotting to merge his Vietnam Progression Party with overseas democracy activists.

Father Ly was brought handcuffed into the courtroom along with four co-defendants at the start of the trial. He began to shout about Vietnam's Communist Party, but a police officer quickly covered his mouth and removed him to a nearby room where the proceedings were broadcast on a loudspeaker.

Father Ly was later brought back, but he refused to answer prosecutors' charges against him, declaring, "The communists use the law of the jungle" before being removed again.

In sentencing, Judge Bui Quoc Hiep said Father Ly deserved "severe punishment" for masterminding efforts to boycott Vietnam's upcoming legislative elections, establish unsanctioned political parties and overthrow the government.

Judge Hiep said the priest and his co-defendants had committed "very serious crimes that harmed national security."

Prosecutors said Father Ly was the mastermind of Bloc 8406, an organization that circulated pro-democracy petitions last year.

Authorities allowed limited press coverage of the trial, a highly unusual move in a country where judicial proceedings against political defendants are typically conducted behind closed doors. About a dozen reporters and foreign diplomats watched the proceedings on a closed-circuit television in a separate room of the courthouse.

The sound was cut briefly when Father Ly shouted.

Last month, authorities moved Father Ly from his home in the city of Hue, where he was under virtual house arrest, and took him to a smaller parish outside the city.

They seized hundreds of documents, six computers and 136 mobile phone cards, and much of that evidence was on display at the front of the courtroom yesterday.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

  Friday, Mar. 30, 2007  By   KAY JOHNSON  

Catholic priest Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly in a courtroom in Vietnam's central province of Thua Thien Hue, Friday March 30, 2007. A Vietnamese court sentenced the dissident Catholic priest to eight years in prison for anti-government activities, after a dramatic trial Friday in which a defiant Ly shouted denunciations of the ruling Communist Party.

Osamu Hirabayashi / Kyodo News / AP

When Vietnam granted rare access to the trial of prominent dissidents, it may not have expected to produce the sight of communist officials slapping their hands over the mouth of a 60-year-old man — a Catholic priest, no less — and wrestling him out of the courtroom. But that is exactly what happened foreign journalists and diplomats saw in the trial of dissident priest Father Nguyen Van Ly and four other activists.

In Vietnam's highest-profile political case in years, the five defendants were found guilty of "conducting propaganda against the Socialist Republic" after a raucous, half-day trial Friday in which the priest loudly denounced the court as "the law of the jungle." At that point he was hushed up and hustled out to follow the proceedings by loudspeaker in an adjoining room where he eventually heard his sentence: Eight years in prison for helping set up and publicize a small, illegal opposition party, known as the Progression Party.

______________________________________________________________________________________

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image:   NGUYEN Van Ly    in court.jpg

2007 – 03  -  30