Vietnam jails fugitive spy for espionage

HANOI: A fugitive spy was jailed for nine years in Vietnam on Monday for "divulging state secrets" after he tried to flee to Europe holding a forged passport in a rare case involving a high-ranking intelligence officer.

The runaway spy Phan Van Anh Vu was arrested in Singapore in January with two passports -- one fake, one real -- and swiftly deported back to Vietnam where he was charged with espionage.

His lawyer said he was trying to reach Germany to offer information on a former Vietnamese oil executive who was kidnapped from Berlin last year and smuggled back to Vietnam to face corruption charges.

Vietnam has not elaborated on the state secrets Vu apparently disclosed, or to whom, but the Cold War-style case has gripped a nation unused to seeing the powerful toppled in public. Vu, working as a high-rolling property developer and secret spy at the time of his arrest, was convicted after a one-day, closed-door trial in Hanoi on Monday that AFP was barred from attending.

Vu was jailed for nine years, while two former intelligence officials were also convicted for "deliberately divulging state secrets", according to the government’s website. Former deputy head of intelligence Phan Huu Tuan received seven years, while ex-police officer Nguyen Huu Bach was sentenced to six years. Local press attending the ultra-secretive trial were only allowed to hear portions of the swiftly-delivered verdict, which offered few details of the trio’s misdeeds.