Berlin: abducted Vietnamese - helpers sentenced to imprisonment

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Vietnamese Embassy in Berlin

Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa

The case had caused tensions between Vietnam and Germany: in 2017, a former Vietnamese manager was kidnapped and kidnapped by his home country's secret service in Berlin.

One of those involved in the crime now has to go to prison for several years.

A good six years after the spectacular kidnapping, the accomplice was sentenced to five years in prison.

The Berlin Court of Appeal found the Vietnamese national guilty of acting as a secret service agent and of aiding and abetting the deprivation of liberty.

According to the court, the kidnapping was an operation by the Vietnamese secret service in which the 32-year-old deliberately took part, albeit in a subordinate position in the hierarchy.

Businessman Trinh Xuan Thanh was kidnapped with his girlfriend on July 23, 2017 in Berlin's Tiergarten and secretly taken home.

In Vietnam, he was twice sentenced to life imprisonment on corruption charges.

The former CEO of a state construction company came to Germany in 2016 and applied for political asylum.

The man is still in custody today - "the martyrdom of the crime victim continues," said the presiding judge.

The now 32-year-old accomplice was arrested in April 2022 in the Czech capital of Prague.

He was transferred to Germany in June and has been in custody since then.

During the trial he had kept silent.

The federal prosecutor had asked for five years in prison.

The defense pleaded for acquittal.

The verdict is not yet legally binding.

In a first trial about his kidnapping in 2018, an accused, also from Vietnam, was

sentenced to three years and ten months in prison for acting as a secret service agent and aiding and abetting the deprivation of liberty.

This judgment is final.

asc/dpa