Brain-damaged man faces death for drug smuggling

A report by a consultant psychiatrist reveals he was severely injured as a child during the Vietnam War when US planes bombed his town. He sustained serious brain damage and two of his brothers were killed.

Luong fled Vietnam in the Seventies, settling in Britain in 1983, where he married his childhood sweetheart and had two children. He became a well-known figure in Greenwich and Kidbrooke where he earned a living working on cars and helping in gardens.

But family members describe Luong as having a child-like personality, which led to the end of a short-lived marriage. They say a new girlfriend lured him to Hong Kong, where he was recruited by the gang who were convicted of smuggling heroin from Laos via Vietnam to Hong Kong and mainland China.

Testimony shows that, during the trial last year, Luong developed more serious mental problems and his "inappropriate behaviour" in court caused people to laugh at him.

During his trial, the other seven members of the gang said Luong was the controlling mind who gave orders to other members. But a new psychiatric report on Luong's condition, commissioned by Reprieve although not yet seen by the Vietnamese courts, casts doubt on the idea he could have led the operation.

A consultant psychiatrist, Nicholas Kennedy, says the evidence is strong that his long-standing behavioural problems are linked to his brain damage and they would have affected his decision to take part in the smuggling. An MRI brain scan carried out in Vietnam has revealed an "abnormal" brain pattern which supports the diagnosis of neurological damage.

Dr Kennedy concludes: "The defendant, in my opinion, is probably suffering from a significant deficit in executive functioning... It is my opinion the defendant's decision to take part in the criminal enterprise of which he has been convicted was the result, to an extent, of the brain injury he suffered as a child."

Today, a court of appeal in Dong Hoi, central Vietnam, will decide whether to commute his death sentence. If the judges uphold the punishment, as his lawyers expect, he could be executed within weeks.

His niece, Thanh Le, 24, a nurse living in south London, said she has only seen her uncle once since his arrest more than two years ago. "He was really a very gentle man," she said. "I know what he is capable of and I know he doesn't have the mental capacity to do what he is accused of. I'm not saying he is innocent, just that he couldn't have been the mastermind."

Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, said Mr Blair should make personal representations to the President of Vietnam. "Unless this happens, there is the real danger of him being executed," he said.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the Government would consider what steps to take after it heard the result of the appeal.

UK nationals on death row

* Linda Carty, from St Kitts, was sentenced in Texas for murdering a neighbour whose child she wanted for herself. She has twice appealed.

* Chan King Yu, from Hong Kong, was charged with trafficking drugs in Malaysia in 2000. He was sentenced to hang after losing an appeal.

* Kenny Richey, 41, was convicted in 1987 of murdering a child in the US, in a fire that prosecutors claimed he started to kill his former girlfriend. In 2003, his conviction was reversed, but it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005.

* Kenny Gay, 51, a British citizen, has been on death row in California for 21 years, after he and a co-defendant were convicted of murdering a police officer.

* Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist, was sentenced to hang in Pakistan for murdering a journalist, Daniel Pearl, in 2002. The US government and Pearl's wife have acknowledged he was not responsible.

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