Kenyan officials race to save citizen on death row in Vietnam
Kenyan authorities are making urgent diplomatic efforts to save Margaret Nduta, a 37-year-old Kenyan woman sentenced to death in Vietnam for drug trafficking.
The government is appealing for clemency, with senior officials engaging their Vietnamese counterparts in a bid to halt the impending execution, the Nation Africa reports.
Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’Oei announced that Kenya’s ambassadors from Thailand had travelled to Vietnam to negotiate on Nduta’s behalf.
“Had a telephone conversation this afternoon with my counterpart, Nguyen Minh Hang, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam, over the matter of Margaret Nduta,” Sing’Oei stated.
“I conveyed to Madam Hang the anxiety of the Kenyan people over the impending execution of our national and reiterated our request for a stay of execution to allow our two countries to find a path to resolving the issue.”
A delegation from Kenya’s embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, has reportedly arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, in a last-minute push to seek clemency for Nduta. The diplomatic intervention comes as time runs out for the Kenyan national, who faces one of the harshest penalties under Vietnam’s strict anti-drug laws.
According to court documents, Nduta was apprehended while in transit to Laos. She later claimed that a Kenyan man named John had hired her to transport a suitcase to another woman and return with additional goods. Before her arrest, Nduta had successfully passed through three major international airports: Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (Kenya), Bole International Airport (Ethiopia), and Hamad International Airport (Qatar).
Vietnam enforces some of the world’s strictest drug laws, with the death penalty mandated for anyone caught smuggling or possessing more than 600 grams of heroin or cocaine.
