US calls for release of Vietnam lawyer who defended activists

Hanoi - The US government urged Vietnam to 'immediately and unconditionally' release a US-educated lawyer arrested this weekend who had defended democracy activists.

Le Cong Dinh, 41, was arrested Saturday in Ho Chi Minh City on charges of 'colluding with domestic and foreign reactionaries to sabotage the Vietnamese state.'

Dinh, a former Fulbright scholar, defended two prominent human rights lawyers in 2007 and a pro-democracy blogger last year.

US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Dinh's arrest 'contradicts the government's own commitment to internationally accepted standards of human rights and to the rule of law.'

An article Monday in the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan said Dinh was a member of an opposition political party, the People's Action Party, formed by Vietnamese emigres in the US. It said Dinh had met repeatedly with party head Nguyen Si Binh to 'work out the action plan to topple the Communist regime in Vietnam in 2010.'

Reached by telephone Tuesday at his home in Palo Alto, California, Nguyen Si Binh said he had worked with Dinh, but denied that the lawyer had ever been a member of the People's Action Party.

'We worked together as individuals on human rights issues and legal reforms in Vietnam,' said Binh, 55. Binh said he stepped down as head of the People's Action Party by 2007 and was no longer associated with the group.

International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said it feared the arrest was 'aimed at punishing a respected man who promotes the cause of the rule of law in Vietnam.'

Dinh, who had a law degree from Tulane University, had been close to several of the dissidents who formed a pro-democracy movement in 2006 known as Bloc 8406. He defended human rights lawyers Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan in May 2007, when they were sentenced to prison for 'disseminating propaganda harmful to the State.'

In September 2008, Dinh defended the pro-democracy blogger known as Dieu Cay, who was sentenced to three years in prison on tax charges.

Several prominent Vietnamese intellectuals have reacted unusually sharply to Dinh's arrest. Leading economist Nguyen Quang A said Monday the arrest was 'a brutal choking-off of democracy.'

Dinh rose to prominence in 2003 when, as a lawyer at the firm White and Case, he defended Vietnamese catfish farmers against US anti-dumping tariffs. He served as vice chairman of Ho Chi Minh City's Law Association before establishing his own firm in March.

Dinh is charged with violating Article 88 of Vietnam's criminal code, which forbids distributing information opposing the government. The charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

DPA