‘Cold war kidnapping’: German court tries man accused of snatching fugitive Vietnamese official from Berlin park
Germany condemned the 2017 operation as a ‘scandalous violation’ of its sovereignty and expelled two Vietnamese diplomats
Germany put on trial on Tuesday the only suspect held over what it calls a brazen cold war-style kidnapping by Vietnamese secret agents that has badly bruised bilateral ties.
The accused – a Vietnamese-Czech man identified only as Long N.H., 47 – allegedly rented and delivered the van that was used in last July’s abduction of a fugitive Vietnamese state company official in a Berlin park.
The kidnapped man, Trinh Xuan Thanh, 52, who was seeking political asylum in Germany, was quickly spirited back to Hanoi and sentenced this year to two life terms in prison on corruption charges.
Thanh and his female companion, Thi Minh P.D., aged in her mid-twenties, were walking in Berlin’s Tiergarten park when “they were both dragged, right out in the open, into a VW van, to be taken to Vietnam against their will,” said prosecutor Lienhardt Weiss.
Weiss said Thanh was returned to Vietnam “by unknown means”.
Germany condemned the July 23, 2017, operation as a “scandalous violation” of its sovereignty. It expelled two Vietnamese diplomats, summoned the ambassador several times and put on ice a strategic bilateral partnership.