Nov 22, 2007, 6:35 GMT
Hanoi - A court in southern Vietnam has upheld the death sentence of an Australian man convicted of trafficking heroin, a court official said Thursday.
The Ho Chi Minh City Court of Appeals decided to uphold the death sentence for Tony Manh, 40, a Vietnamese-Australian, after a one-day trial Wednesday, said judge Nguyen Xuan Phat.
'He didn't have any mitigating circumstances to have his sentence commuted,' Judge Phat said.
Manh was arrested at Tan Son Nhat Airport in March this year as he was about to board a plane to Sydney with 948 grams of heroin hidden in his underwear.
He was convicted and sentenced to death in September after confessed in his trial that he was hired by another man for 10,000 dollars to transport the heroin to Australia, according to the judge.
Vietnam has sentenced at least 71 people to death since the beginning of this year, including 41 death sentences for drug crimes.
Several Vietnamese-Australians have been sentenced to death in recent years for drug crimes, but so far none have been executed and several have had their sentences commuted to life.
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