Vietnam: O.C. Man Led Terror Plot

Vietnam has charged 38 members of an anti-government group formed in Orange County with attempted terrorism and sabotage, a newspaper reported Saturday in a rare account of opposition to the Communist state.

The Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said the 38 were among 50 members of an anti-government organization arrested by security forces in 1999 and 2000 for planning terrorist attacks and propaganda against the Vietnamese government.

Activities by anti-government groups are rarely publicized in the state-controlled media.

Government officials said the organization, Free Vietnam Government, was established and headed by Nguyen Huu Chanh, a Vietnamese native living in Orange County, in 1992.

The 38 Vietnamese to be tried consist of 33 residents of Thailand or Cambodia, another unidentified overseas resident and four Vietnamese living in Vietnam, the newspaper said.

It did not explain the fate of the 12 others who were arrested, but said Chanh had not been detained.

It said Chanh sent a total of 35 members of his organization to Vietnam on 11 occasions with explosives and leaflets, but that all the attempts at sabotage had failed.

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The newspaper said Chanh visited Thailand in early 1999 and met with members of the group to discuss plans to carry out terrorist attacks in Vietnam, apparently aimed at creating instability.

On March 25, 1999, members of the group brought 12,000 anti-government leaflets and 29 flags of the former South Vietnamese government into Vietnam from Cambodia and on April 19 spread leaflets in three areas of Ho Chi Minh City and released balloons with the South Vietnamese flags over the Saigon River, it said.

They were all arrested the next day by security forces, the newspaper said.

Security forces also prevented an attempt by members of the group to explode bombs at two locations in the Mekong delta city of Can Tho on April 15, the newspaper said.

Two other members of the group were arrested April 21 while traveling from Cambodia to place bombs in a central park in Ho Chi Minh city, formerly Saigon, it said.

Another two were prevented in March 2000 from throwing grenades at a gathering of the Hoa Hao Buddhist sect in southern An Giang province, the newspaper said.

About 1 million Vietnamese left the country in 1975, when the Communist government in Hanoi gained control of southern Vietnam.