Widow searches for answers

AS Vietnam's leaders look to the future, Nguyen Thi Lop is looking for a corpse - her husband's.

The footage of the summary execution of her husband Nguyen Van Lem at point-blank range by Saigon police chief Nguyen Loan remains one of the most graphic images from the war.

Yesterday, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Mrs Lop sat, ill, in her tiny house next to a graveyard on the outskirts of the city, saying that she will never be able to rest until she knows what became of her husband's body.

'I must know what they did with my husband, it hurts me to think I may never find out,' she said.

'The US must send that beast back to Vietnam so I can find out. If they can't get him back, they should compensate just like they should pay reparations to all the Vietnamese for their aggression.' Mrs Lop found out about the execution in the same way the rest of the world did - by seeing it splashed across newspaper front pages. 'I was pregnant at the time and had two young children . . . that meant I had to swallow my grievance. For a long time I just wanted to kill him.

'I think about it a lot. I am sad and hurt, but also proud that so many people know about the cause for which my husband died. Today I feel happy because the anniversary marks the end of all the bloodshed.' Captain Loan had been hunting Lem and other southern revolutionaries for weeks and killed him within 12 hours of his capture.