Jailed Prominent Vietnamese Blogger Dieu Cay Freed, on Way to US: Sources

OCT. 21, 2014 – Authorities in Hanoi have freed one of Vietnam’s most prominent jailed bloggers and dissidents, Nguyen Van Hai, and deported him to the United States, sources said Tuesday.

Hai, who is also known by his pen name Dieu Cay, was handed a 12-year prison sentence in September 2012 for conducting “anti-state propaganda” amid a crackdown on bloggers in the one-party state after his online articles slammed communist rule and highlighted alleged abuses by the authorities. He was first arrested in 2008.

"Blogger Dieu Cay is on an airplane heading to the U.S.," a source in Hanoi told Radio Free Asia's Vietnamese Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A source dealing with the State Department said she was told that Hai was on his way to Los Angeles. The State Department in Washington would not confirm the news.

Straight to airport

Hai's wife Duong Thi Tan said he was taken straight from his jail to the airport and put on a plane to the United States.

"They let him go from Hanoi airport. We are in Saigon," Tan told RFA from Ho Chi Minh City, where she and their son are residing.

"We only got a message saying that Hai was on the way to the Noi Bai airport. I called that number again several times, but he did not answer," she said. "The last message was he was on the airplane that was about to take off. I don’t know where it was heading to."

"Hai could not call us at home," she said. "In fact, they did not let the family know anything about his release. There was no signal or notice. They deported him to exile, they did not release him just like what they said."

Just two months ago, Hai had refused to make an official application to the authorities seeking his release from prison, insisting instead that they explain the reasons for his initial arrest and demanding that he be freed without condition.

“He said that he told them he is innocent and that his arrest was illegal,” Tan said.

Following a visit to Vietnam in early August by U.S. Senators John McCain and Sheldon Whitehouse, rumors had spread that Hai might be freed from jail on Vietnam’s Independence Day on Sept. 2, Tan said.

On July 27, 2013, Hai ended a five-week-long hunger strike at Prison No. 6 in Vietnam’s northern Nghe An province after judicial authorities agreed to investigate his complaints over abuses in prison.

Arrested in April 2008 after helping to lead anti-China protests, Hai was sentenced in 2009 to 30 months in prison on a charge of tax evasion but was not freed after completing his term, and was then charged with carrying out propaganda against the state.

An appeals court upheld his sentence in December 2012, and authorities have repeatedly transferred him from one prison to another.

Hai’s case has been adopted by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and raised by U.S. President Barack Obama, whose administration has called on Hanoi to release all political prisoners in Vietnam.

These included attempts by prison officials to force him to sign a document admitting guilt in the charges for which he was convicted, Tan said.

Paris-based press freedoms watchdog Reporters Without Borders lists Vietnam as an “Enemy of the Internet” and the third-largest prison in the world for netizens.

Vietnam is second only to China for the number of journalists jailed, according to the annual prison census of the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which counts 16 out of 18 Vietnamese reporters currently behind bars as bloggers.

Reported by RFA's Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.

View this story online at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/blogger-10212014122030.html

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