A Vietnamese court yesterday sentenced 11 people to death and 19 to life imprisonment in one of the country’s largest ever drug trafficking cases.

The case dates back to March 2023, when four flight attendants for Vietnam Airlines were ‌caught carrying narcotics hidden in toothpaste tubes at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport, after arriving on Flight VN10 from Paris. The tubes contained more than 2.9 kilograms of ketamine and 8.3 kilograms of MDMA.

The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court yesterday sentenced 11 people to death for illegal drug trafficking in connection with the case. This included the alleged ringleader Ha Danh Nam, 52, from Nghe An province, who remains on the run and is one of four defendants being tried in absentia. All 11 were also fined between 50 and 100 million dong ($1,916 and $3,832) each.

Prosecutors allege that Nam “organized the transportation of drugs from France to Vietnam by air and through international express delivery services,” disguised as consumer goods from France into Vietnam, according to the state media outlet VnExpress. They said that drugs “were concealed in toothpaste, dietary supplements, confectionery, and other consumer goods.”

Members of the network then used delivery services, encrypted messaging platforms such as Signal and Telegram, and bank accounts registered under other people’s names in order to distribute the drugs throughout Vietnam while evading detection.

Among the 19 defendants who received life terms was Hoang Sy Thang, 39, and his nephew-in-law Bui Van Anh, both also from Nghe An, who ran the network’s main storage point and were convicted of the illegal transport of narcotics.

According to a report in VnExpress, the so-called VN10 case was “the largest drug case in the country’s history, with transaction flows traced at nearly VND29 trillion ($1.1 billion) across close to 500 branches and sub-branches in 34 provinces and cities.”

A total of 227 defendants were subsequently charged in connection with the case. In addition to the trafficking and transporting of drugs, the charges also included possession, use of forged documents, concealing a crime, failure to report a crime, and unlawful appropriation of property. However, the four flight attendants avoided criminal charges after investigators ruled that they were not aware of what the toothpaste tubes contained.

The 11 death sentences in the VN10 case could be among the last that Vietnam hands down for drug trafficking. In recent years, the government has narrowed down the use of capital punishment as part of a broad overhaul of its Penal Code.

Last month, the government recommended removing the death penalty for an additional six offenses, among them drug trafficking. The death penalty for illegally transporting narcotics was similarly removed last year, along with seven other offenses.

If approved at the National Assembly’s next session in October, the latest revision to the Penal Code would leave the death penalty in place for just four crimes:  treason, murder, terrorism, and the illegal production of narcotics.

While the death penalty remains in place for the charge of drug trafficking for the time being, it remains to be seen whether these sentences will be carried out before then – and if not, whether the change will apply retroactively.