13 May 2003 :
Nguyen Van Toai, a 64-year-old Vietnamese man from Nghe An province near the Lao border was sentenced to death by firing squad after being convicted of opium trafficking. The court found him guilty of buying and selling 36 kilograms of opium between February 1999 and May 2001, when he was arrested.(Sources: Agence France Presse, 20/05/2003)