AFP - Tuesday, March 3
HANOI (AFP) - - A Vietnamese human rights lawyer defending Catholics in a land dispute with the communist authorities was taken in by police for questioning Tuesday, he told AFP, days after they raided his office.
Lawyer Le Tran Luat said he had been taken to a police station in the southern city of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, just as he was about to fly to the capital Hanoi to work on his defence of the Catholics in an appeal case.
“At the (airport) security gate I was arrested and shown a paper saying they wanted to work with me and I was taken to Go Vap district police station,” he told AFP from the police station by mobile telephone.
Luat said he had been called in for 24 hours. Last week he said his office in Ho Chi Minh City had been raided by police and five computers seized in a move he branded a “political manoeuvre”.
The raid Wednesday came after the Ho Chi Minh City police online newspaper said clients had complained they had been unfairly billed for the lawyer’s services.
The paper also accused him of tax fraud and faking house rental contracts.
The newspaper didn’t explicitly mention a police raid but talked about an operation to enforce a court decision demanding Luat give back 42 million dong (2,500 dollars) to a client.
Luat is defending Catholics handed suspended jail terms for “disorderly conduct” and “damaging state property” for tearing down a wall around property at the centre of a dispute between the Church and the Vietnamese authorities.
The eight accused are appealing the court ruling relating to the incident in August. Two also filed a complaint against state media for their coverage of the trial.
It is not clear when the appeal hearing will take place.
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