Australian Vietnamese woman Jasmine Luong sentenced to death

An appeal court in Vietnam has sentenced an Vietnamese-Australian woman to death for heroin trafficking after prosecutors appealed against her original life sentence, a court clerk said Wednesday.Jasmine Luong, 34, was handed the death penalty on Tuesday by the court in Ho Chi Minh City, he said on condition of anonymity.
Luong, who was born in Vietnam, was arrested at Tan Son Nhat airport outside Ho Chi Minh City in February last year as she preparing to fly to Sydney with nearly 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of heroin, according to a police source.
"She had been hired to transport those heroin packs, hidden in her luggage and shoes," the source said.Several Australians of Vietnamese origin have been arrested over the past few years for trafficking heroin from Ho Chi Minh City to Australia. Of those, some were given life imprisonment or the death penalty.However, foreigners are rarely executed in the communist state, usually after intense diplomatic pressure from Western governments.Vietnam has some of the world's toughest drug laws. Those caught with more than 600 grams of heroin or 20 kilograms of opium face the death penalty.At least 104 people were sentenced to death in Vietnam last year, and 12 since the beginning of the year, according to figures compiled by AFP from state media and Vietnamese officials.
Vietnamese court of appeals has handed down death sentence to an Australian Vietnamese woman for drug smuggling, instead of life imprisonment one passed by the court of first instance, local newspaper Saigon Liberation reported Wednesday. The Supreme People's Court in southern Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday gave the penalty to the 34-year-old man named Luong Jasmine, who was hired to transport heroin from Vietnam to Australia to tune of 16,000 U.S. dollars. Jasmine was arrested in February in 2007 when completing procedures for her departure to Australia at the International TanSon Nhat Airport in the city. Under Vietnam's laws, anyone possessing, trading or trafficking heroin of 600 grams or above can be sentenced to death or life in prison. facing the firing squad in Vietnam says she became a drug mule to pay off her husband's gambling debts.Jasmine Luong, 34, from Sydney, was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City's airport in February last year with 1.5kg of heroin in her baggage and shoes. Fairfax newspapers say Luong claimed that an unidentified man offered her $US15,000 ($16,458) to take the drugs to Sydney. In December she was sentenced to life imprisonment, but on her appeal this week the sentence was upgraded to the death penalty. It is believed Luong has claimed she was deserted by her husband and was left with little choice when approached about becoming a drug mule, Fairfax reported.