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VIETNAM EXECUTES FIRST PRISONER WITH LETHAL INJECTION
August 6, 2013: A 27-year-old man convicted of murder and robbery has become the first death-row prisoner to be executed with the lethal injection in Vietnam. The inmate, Nguyen Anh Tuan of Hanoi, was executed with the new method in the morning at the Hanoi Police Prison, according to a Thanh Nien News source.
He was executed with three drugs that put him to sleep, relaxed his muscles and stopped his heart.
The execution was completed at 10 a.m. and his body was handed to his family for a funeral.
Tuan was sentenced to death by the Hanoi People’s Court on January 20, 2010 on murder and robbery convictions.
His accomplice, Nguyen Hai Hoan, had committed suicide before the trial began.
According to the verdict, Tuan and Hoan made friends with Bui Thi Nguyet, born in 1981, who worked at a gas station in Hanoi.
The crime took place on March 8, 2009 when the duo invited Nguyet to go out to a café but threatened her midway with a knife to rob VND400,000 and her cell phone.
Hoan stabbed her when she attempted to run away while Tuan tried to stop her from crying for help. They threw her body in a nearby pond.
The duo was arrested on June 21, 2009.
Tuan became the first death-row prisoner to be executed by lethal injection in Vietnam since it switched from the firing squad in November 2011.
However, a lack of lethal injection doses led to a delay of executions because the original decree stipulated that the drugs be imported from the European Union (EU).
The EU banned the exportation of lethal injection drugs because it regards capital punishment to be a violation of human rights.
The Vietnamese government later amended the decree, which took effect on June 27, allowing domestic-made drugs. (Sources: thanhniennews.com, 06/08/2013)
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