The Criminal Division of the Wuxue Court recently conducted a fair and public trial according to legal procedures for a case involving a Vietnamese defendant accused of kidnapping. The presiding judge, adhering to relevant criminal procedure laws, arranged for a professional interpreter and legal aid for the foreign defendant to ensure a fair and appropriate trial.
As presented by the prosecution, in 2023, defendants He and Nguyen (a Vietnamese national being tried separately) collaborated with intermediaries to introduce Vietnamese women as brides for single men in exchange for brokerage fees. By late 2023, many of the Vietnamese brides introduced by He had absconded repeatedly. Consequently, He compensated the families of these men with hundreds of thousands of yuan.
From March to April 2024, in an attempt to earn brokerage fees and claim compensation from the intermediary, He orchestrated the arrival of three Vietnamese women in Huanggang City. There, he employed violent methods to constrain their personal freedom and extorted money from their families. Defendants Cheng and Shi (another Vietnamese national) knowingly aided in restricting the hostages’ freedom despite being aware of He’s objective to use them as hostages.
The actions of the three defendants violate Article 239, Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, and they should be held criminally accountable for the crime of kidnapping.
