Sam Duc Xuong at the police station of Vi Xuyen town, Ha Giang Province

Some state officials and businessmen were excluded from a high profile case where a school principal was charged with having sex with underage students in northern Vietnam last year, a lawyer said.

Many of them were state officials and businessmen in the northern province, Trien said.

Nguyen Thi Hang, who got six years together with Thuy on the same charges, also wrote a letter to her lawyer Nguyen Van Tu with the same claims.

Before the case was first tried last November, Hang and Thuy had provided the list of the men, including their names, positions and contacts, to local agencies, but those details weren’t included during the trial, Vietnamnet quoted Hang’s letter as saying.

Trien and Tu said they would propose that the first trial’s sentences are overturned at an appeals court that will sit on Wednesday.

The first trial, which was held before a closed court with no one other than the defendants, victims and those directly involved allowed to attend, sentenced Xuong, 53, to ten and half years in prison for having sex with at least nine underage students.

The victims included Thuy and Hang, both 19 years old, who were forced to have sex with Xuong while they were studying at Viet Lam High School, where Xuong had been principal before transferring to Viet Vinh High School.

Source: Thanh Nien