The Dong Tam trial: Violations of the criminal procedure Law at the Court of first instance

Dong Tam trial: Vietnamese people’s hearts and minds are no longer easy for the state media to manipulate.

Nguyen Tien Trung

The trial of 29 Dong Tam villagers that took place from 7 to 14 September 2020, has attracted great public attention in Vietnam. On the first day of the trial, “Dong Tam trial” ranked second on Google search queries in Vietnam with tens of thousands of searches. Before the trial, Vietnam’s state-owned media had reported intensively about the case but the information was one-sided that denounced the villagers as criminals. The objective was to instill prejudices in the public mind, portraying Dong Tam villagers as violent and drug-addicted and their leader, Mr. Le Dinh Kinh, 84, as a wicked landlord and local despot. Those who were not exposed to different viewpoints on social media would likely believe in such propaganda.

However, looking at some viral reactions on Facebook towards the trial and the verdict, we can see that people’s hearts and minds are no longer easy for the state media to manipulate. Despite many restrictions and hurdles imposed on them by the court, lawyers defending 29 villagers spared no effort to share the details of court proceedings and information about the defendants. Their Facebook status posts shed a new light on the trial, challenging the official line, and sowing serious doubts among the public about the transparency and fairness of the trial.

This article reviews the most egregious legal violations of the court as described by lawyers who defended Dong Tam villagers such as Dang Dinh Manh, Nguyen Van Mieng, Ngo Anh Tuan, and Le Van Luan, as well as by relatives of the late Le Dinh Kinh, including his wife Mrs. Du Thi Thanh.

1. Verdicts before trial

At the beginning of the trial, a reportage that had been aired several times on national television (VTV) was shown on a big screen in the courtroom. It included footages of the incident recorded in the early morning of 9 January 2020 and the “confessions” of 29 Dong Tam villagers who were arrested in that incident. The reportage used accusatory and biased languages and the footages appeared to have been heavily edited. All the defendants’ lawyers protested against the showing of the video to no avail.

This was one of many worrisome signs showing that the trial was not taking place in a fair manner. The next developments will expose other disturbing signs of an unfair trial.

2. Lawyers refused access to the original footage of the incident

After the above reportage was shown, the lawyers requested permission to review the original footage themselves. It became clear that when the police entered Dong Tam village, they also recorded the entire incident or parts of it on camera. The original footage is definitely a crucial piece of evidence, but the judge refused to provide it to the lawyers despite their protest.

Up until this point, no one but the 29 villagers and the law enforcement teams who were present at the village on January 9, know what exactly happened that night. By refusing to provide the original footage of the incident, doubts can be raised about the basis of all the accusations, especially the murder charges on two villagers around the circumstance of three officers’ deaths. And this leads us to the next point.

3. Murder scene reenactment not permitted 

This is a serious criminal case where four people died in dubious circumstances. The police raid to the village occurred between midnight to early morning, when very few independent witnesses were present. Many members of the public and lawyers have cast doubts on the circumstances in which three police officers and a well-respected elder, Mr. Le Dinh Kinh, died. Scene reenactment is a must to ensure that testimonies are consistent with the evidence found at the scene. However, the trial court’s judge continued to refuse lawyers’ requests to carry out the murder scene reenactment.

Police investigation left many questions unanswered. Firstly, it’s hard to believe that three policemen fell into a 76x145cm hole at the same time. Secondly, how could two Dong Tam villagers have poured gasoline, an extremely flammable and volatile liquid, into a plastic bucket then dumped it into that 4-meter-deep hole multiple times without being caught on fire and got burned themselves? Thirdly, how could a small fire from one or two liters of gasoline in a small deep hole have burned three people into ashes within one or two hours? Lastly, lawyers and many curious people have visited the scene and they all believed there were no signs of gasoline burning in the hole.

The lawyers requested reenacting the scene to clear all the doubts. Not only could this help to convince Dong Tam people but it would also clarify the circumstances in which the three policemen had died. However, lawyer Nguyen Hong Bach, who represented the families of the dead policemen, and even the state press all maintained that scene reenactment would be too “barbaric” and even inhumane. They claimed that the reenactment would require three people to be burnt alive in that hole, which is definitely not how a reenactment is conducted for the purpose of investigation.

As there has been no scene reenactment, lawyers and the public, even after the trial, are unconvinced that those Dong Tam villagers were responsible for the deaths of three policemen.

4. Torture during detention

In the aforementioned confession video, Dong Tam villagers appeared exhausted with swelling bruises and scratches on their faces. This raised serious doubts that they had been subjected to corporal punishment.

When lawyer Dang Dinh Manh asked 29 defendants: “Who were not tortured?”, only 10 arms were raised hesitantly, suggesting that the other 19 people had been tortured during their detention. One defendant, Mr. Le Dinh Cong, declared that he had been tortured every day by an investigator named Pham Viet Anh.

5. Death of a Dong Tam villager ignored 

Besides the deaths of three policemen, on Dong Tam villagers’ side, Mr. Le Dinh Kinh died because of multiple gun shots in the head, chest and leg. At the court, Mr. Bui Viet Hieu and Ms. Bui Thi Noi both testified very clearly that the police forces shot directly at their chests, but they both luckily survived. All these details are important to understand the developments of the incident. But the court ignored these testimonies and refused to launch a separate investigation on the death of Mr. Le Dinh Kinh.

Mr. Bui Viet Hieu also claimed that he saw the policeman who confronted Mr. Kinh then shot and killed him. This was consistent with the wounds found on Mr. Kinh’s body when his family was preparing his corpse for a traditional burial.

Mrs. Du Thi Thanh, Mr. Kinh’s wife, also confirmed that when she was dragged out of her house by the police, her husband was still alive and had been completely subdued by the police. It is thus questionable whether Mr. Kinh threatened the police and was then killed, as claimed by the authorities.

6. Witnesses and relatives not allowed in court

Although the trial was claimed to be a public trial, relatives of defendants were prevented from even entering the ground of the courthouse. They were chased away by police forces outside the court. Those relatives are also key witnesses of the January 9 incident.

Mrs. Du Thi Thanh, for example, is a crucial witness as mentioned above, but the judge did not allow Mrs. Thanh to testify, even when the lawyers insisted and requested her presence at the court. As a result, the judge did not evaluate all testimonies from Dong Tam villagers and rely only on the police’s version of the incident.

Moreover, important agencies such as Hanoi People’s Committee, Hanoi police, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Defense were absent from the court. The judge continued to ignore lawyers’ requests that representatives of those agencies must be present for questioning.

7. Conflicts of interest 

In this incident, Hanoi police played two roles at the same time. They were the ones who planned and executed the raid at Dong Tam village, specifically the assault on Mr. Kinh’s house on January 9, but they were also the ones conducting the investigation. Hence, there is an obvious conflict of interest here.

Moreover, defendants were held in detention centers controlled by Hanoi’s police department. Thus, there are reasons to be skeptical about the impartiality and independence of the investigation it conducted.

8. Lawyers not permitted to contact their clients

Before the trial, contacts between lawyers and defendants had been extremely limited. Lawyers could only meet their clients 30 days ahead of the trial, but with the presence and supervision of the police. During the hearing, lawyers and their clients were separated and kept a distance from one another. Each defendant was encircled by several policemen or policewomen. The judge made it clear that contacts between lawyers and defendants were forbidden. Even eye contacts between lawyers and defendants were extremely difficult, according to a testament of a lawyer.

After the lawyers protested, the judge backtracked and allowed them to communicate with their clients under stringent conditions. In particular, the court required the lawyers to register in advance in order to talk to their clients during the hearing, but they were not informed about how and with whom they could register. Moreover, lawyers had to keep a 2-meter distance when talking to their clients. No meaningful discussions could realistically have taken place under such conditions. In the end, the lawyers couldn’t communicate with their clients at all during the entire trial.

9. Ambiguities concerning “official duty”

The presence of the police at Dong Tam village on the early morning of 9 January 2020 and their subsequent actions were justified by an “official duty” under which the police force had to protect the Mieu Mon military airport project. This is the location of the land dispute between Dong Tam villagers led by Mr. Le Dinh Kinh and Hanoi’s officials since 2017.

However, the location of the airport project that the police force claimed to dutifully protect is 3 kilometers away from Dong Tam village. In other words, the “official duty” wasn’t conducted in daylight at the disputed land but at a private property, namely the houses of Mr. Kinh and his family members at midnight.

In the indictment, “official duty” was defined as the Plan No. 419a/KH-PV01-PV02-MP, proposed by the Hanoi’s police department and approved by the Ministry of Public Security. Lawyers have sought for more information of this plan but the judge rejected on the ground that this plan was classified.

The accusations against 29 Dong Tam villagers were established on the assumption that they “had resisted public servants on duty.” This poses two important questions here: (1) Was this “official duty” legal? (2) Were Dong Tam villagers properly informed of that “official duty”?

If Dong Tam villagers were suddenly attacked in their own homes, and possibly they were not informed of what kind of “official duty” the policemen were doing at their houses at midnight, they could not be accused of “resisting public servants on duty.” But they were convicted even when those two questions remained unanswered.

10. Oral arguments limited 

As aforementioned questionable procedures remain unclear, during oral arguments, lawyers asked to clarify them but their speeches were cut short. They could not conduct their defense to the end.

The hearing examined a serious criminal case in which four persons had already died, 29 people were indicted, and two were given death penalties. Yet the trial lasted for only four days, from Monday to Thursday. It begs the question whether time was sufficient so that all the defendants had access to justice.

In pursuit of justice 

It’s disturbing that many violations of the criminal procedure law were committed before and during the trial. It can be said that the court did not uphold justice but served as a tool to punish Dong Tam villagers and to intimidate other villagers who dared to challenge the authorities in a land dispute.

The Dong Tam case set a very bad precedent that the police can unleash violence against any citizens with impunity behind the excuse of a “top-secret official duty” and can even penalize anyone resisting their illegal acts. Not only was the death of the village elder Le Dinh Kinh ignored but the death of three policemen also remains a mystery.

The trial has finished but the story did not end there. The verdicts with death penalties have sparked controversies and public outcries. Many well-known intellectuals have spoken out to voice their concerns. The Dong Tam case will surely have a lasting impact on Vietnamese society in the future and its consequences cannot be evaluated thoroughly at the moment.

Additional Information

The first-instance trial panel of Dong Tam case from 7 to 14 September 2020 at Hanoi People’s Court

Presiding Judge:  Mr. Trương Việt Toàn

Judge: Mr. Nguyễn Xuân Văn

People’s jurors: Mr. Phí Văn Nghi, Mrs. Ngô Thị Yến, Mr. Nguyễn Hồ Phong

Secretary: Mr. Nguyễn Mạnh Hà, Mr. Nguyễn Đăng Khoa

Representatives of Hanoi People’s Procuracy: Mr. Lại Việt Đông, Mr. Nguyễn Hoàng Giang

List of fatalities 

List of defendants and their verdicts 

In total, the verdicts of the first-instance court consisted of two death penalties, one life imprisonment sentence, 12 sentences with duration from 3 to 16 years in jail, and 14 sentences with duration from 15 months to 3 years of probation.