22 September 2004 :

Ly Thi Ai was sentenced to death after it was discovered that she had lied about her son's age at her trial in order to escape the death penalty. Ai, a 39-year-old farmer, had been arrested in March 2001 for trafficking opium from Vietnam's northwestern province of Son La and selling it in her home province of Cao Bang, which borders China. During her trial in April 2002 she admitted having trafficked 76 kilograms (167 pounds) of the drug between July 2000 and the time of her arrest. Under Vietnam's laws anyone in possession of 10 kilograms or more of opium faces the death penalty. Ai, however, was spared this punishment because she claimed her son was only two years old. Vietnamese law bans courts from handing down death sentences to mothers with children aged under the age of three. Instead, she was sentenced to life imprisonment. Earlier in 2004 police discovered that Ai had used a fake birth certificate for her son and that at the time of her trial he was aged three. The Hanoi People's Court condemned her to death following a one day trial.