15 July 2003 :

Ho Van Xuan, 46, a man jailed in 1979 for belonging to a former South Vietnamese "reactionary organization", was sentenced to death in Vietnam for scalping his brother-in-law. Xuan was given the death penalty by the People's Court of Dong Nai province for murder and escaping from prison after being given an 18-year sentence four years after the reunification of the country. Xuan managed to escape from jail in the central province of Quang Nam and fled south to Dong Nai province where he married and worked as a farmer until 1987, a court clerk said. However, after killing his brother-in-law with a machete over a family dispute he fled back to Quang Nam. He was finally arrested in January 2002.