Vietnamese court jails lawyer for 3 years over Facebook posts

[ad_1] A court docket in Vietnam sentenced on Friday a distinguished lawyer to a few years in jail for Fb posts criticizing a former chief justice that the supreme court docket stated contained fabricated content material, state media reported.

Tran Dinh Trien was discovered responsible of “abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the pursuits of the State and the reputable rights and pursuits of organizations and people” beneath Article 331 of the legal code in keeping with the Tuoi Tre information website.

The fees carried a most sentence of seven years in jail.

The 65-year-old former deputy head of the Hanoi Bar Affiliation was arrested on June 1, 2024, for 3 posts on Fb that prosecutors stated criticized the actions of then-Chief Justice Nguyen Hoa Binh.

Trien and his crew of 12 legal professionals argued that he was exercising his proper to freedom of speech and had not damaged the regulation.

In one of many posts he was prosecuted for, Trien criticized Binh for upholding a demise sentence for Ho Duy Hai at his ultimate enchantment in Could 2020. Hai had persistently proclaimed his innocence after being discovered responsible of homicide and theft in 2009.

RELATED STORIES

Vietnam tightens controls on social media customers

US-based lawyer requires folks’s court docket to strive corrupt Vietnam officers

Metropolis bar affiliation cancels membership of Vietnamese activist legal professionals

The trial panel in a Hanoi court docket stated that when exercising free speech people should obey the regulation and never infringe on the pursuits of the nation, the folks and the state, Tuoi Tre reported.

It stated the prosecution’s indictment said that Trien “had private grievances, believing that the judiciary and the management of the Supreme Individuals’s Courtroom had unreasonable points.”

Vietnam’s prime court docket, the Supreme Individuals’s Courtroom, stated three of Trien’s Fb posts contained “fabricated and unfaithful” content material “severely insulting the dignity, honor, and status” of its chief justice.

The Ministry of Info and Communications stated the articles “negatively affected safety, order, and social security.”

Forward of the sentencing, teams together with U.S.-based Human Rights Watch had known as for Trien’s fast launch saying legal professionals will need to have the liberty to train their opinions as a lot as anybody else.