25 November 2000 :

A court in the commercial capital of Ho Chi Minh City sentenced a US national, also wanted by Belgian police, to death for heroin trafficking, just days after US President Bill Clinton's landmark visit. The court found Vietnamese-born Nguyen Manh Cuong, alias Bui Huu Tai, who fled to the United States in 1978 at the age of 10, guilty of trafficking 1.6 kilograms (three and a half pounds) of heroin. Police arrested Tai in September 1998 when he was being sought by Belgian police for "murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking," the official VNA news agency said. A search of his Ho Chi Minh City home found 1.055 kilograms (2.32 pounds) of opium and 10.01 grams (0.35 ounces) of heroin. Police told the court that Tai had purchased the 1.6 kilogrammes of heroin from Vietnamese national Nguyen Thi Hoa who was arrested with him. Hoa was also convicted of drug trafficking but escaped with a life prison sentence because she was pregnant at the time of her arrest and now has a young child, Saigon Giaiphong said.