Vietnam police charge blogger with libel, victim not identified

Nov 2, 2010, 9:49 GMT

Hanoi - A popular society blogger in Vietnam has been charged with libel for describing a deputy minister's son as a womanizer linked to underworld figures, police said Tuesday.

But police declined to specify whether she was charged with libeling the son, the deputy minister, or other parties, saying the investigation was not complete.

Police filed charges Monday against Le Nguyen Huong Tra, 35, who was arrested October 23. In a blog post dated October 21 and subsequently taken down, she had written that police official Nguyen Khanh Trong, son of Deputy Minister of Public Security Nguyen Khanh Toan, was romantically linked to several models and actresses, and was 'respected' by gangsters.

Police said Tra would be prosecuted both for libeling private persons and for harming state interests.

'She libeled a high official working for the state, which not only damaged his reputation, but made people think badly of state officials,' police Major General Cao Minh Nhan, deputy chief of the anti-crime department of the Ministry of Public Security, said.

Copies of Tra's blog post on other websites show that it did not directly criticize Toan, but did have a link to a letter of complaint from a ministry official, hosted on a different website, alleging that his son Trong had a drug addiction problem and denouncing Toan for using his influence to get him a job.

Police Colonel Nguyen Tri Phuong said police had made an 'initial' finding of who Tra had libeled in her post, but would not make it public until their investigation was complete.

Press freedom groups and foreign governments have expressed concern over the arrest, as well as the detention of several other bloggers and human-rights activists. During a visit to Hanoi on Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Vietnamese government 'attacks on bloggers.'

If found guilty, Tra could face up to seven years in prison.

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