Vietnam Jails U.S. Vet for Guns, Contraband

The Vietnam War veteran came back to teach English, marry a local woman and make a new life.

But Everett Milton Sennholz brought too much baggage from his old life.

A court sentenced him Saturday to five years in prison and fined him the equivalent of $12,700 for including two guns, ammunition and several dozen banned books and videotapes in his shipment of household goods.

Sennholz’s conviction came as a sharp reminder that despite the establishment of diplomatic relations last summer, Vietnam and the United States remain worlds apart.

Standing before a Haiphong People’s Court judge in a blue-and-white-striped prison uniform with the number T306, Sennholz, 45, appeared shaken by the verdict. Asked if he understood, he replied, “Excuse me, sir, can you repeat the question?” in a quavering voice, then said, “Yes.”

The sentence was severe by U.S. standards but lenient in Vietnam. Sennholz could have received 14 years.

Two U.S. diplomats and Hanoi-based foreign journalists were allowed to attend the trial in Haiphong, 90 miles southeast of Hanoi.

Sennholz, a self-employed tax consultant from Puyallup, Wash., was arrested in August when Vietnamese officials found a .30-caliber Savage bolt-action rifle with scope, a 12-gauge Browning shotgun and more than 300 rounds of ammunition in his shipment from the United States.

Sennholz said the weapons were for hunting, but the court decided the Savage rifle was a military weapon.

Authorities also charged him with illegally transporting goods, saying he did not declare hundreds of books, videotapes and cassette tapes.

Vietnamese law requires all publications and recordings be censored. It is concerned about weapons because of threats from exiled former South Vietnamese who want to overthrow the government, although prosecutors did not allege that Sennholz had any links to them.

The judge said 24 of the books and 23 of the videos could have seriously affected social order, and ordered them destroyed. They included Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History,” a popular U.S. general history of Vietnam; Sylvester Stallone’s “Rambo,” which claims Vietnam is still holding U.S. prisoners from the Vietnam War; and the pornographic 1970s movie “Behind the Green Door.”

Sennholz, who refused a Vietnamese lawyer, at first denied the charges. He said the guns did not meet military specifications and that a book the prosecution described as a training manual was a photo collection of U.S. weapons from World War II.

“With all due respect to your expert, your expert knows nothing about weapons,” said Sennholz. He said he was a weapons specialist in Vietnam during the war but gave no other details of his service.

But after the prosecutor recommended a five- to six-year prison term and said honesty would bring leniency, Sennholz became subdued. He said he had simply packed everything he owned after a 1994 divorce.

Diplomats and journalists were not allowed to speak with him before he was taken back to prison. He has 15 days to appeal.