Eight Vietnamese people were charged in Slovakia for participating in the kidnapping of Trinh Xuan Thanh, a former provincial vice chairman and former senior official of the state-owned petrol firm. This was reported by the Bratislava newspaper “Dennik.”
Bratislava’s daily newspaper „Dennik“ reported on April 5, 2024 about the decision to prosecute eight Vietnamese people involved in kidnapping Trinh Xuan Thanh.
The main defendant is Le Hong Quang, former advisor to then-Prime Minister Robert Fico, who also returned to the position of Prime Minister last year. Quang is accused of chairing a meeting between Vietnamese Minister of Public Security To Lam and then-Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak on July 26, 2017. As part of a meeting that lasted only 40 minutes, during which To Lam came from Vietnam and Kalinak interrupted his vacation in Austria, Trinh Xuan Thanh and members of his kidnapping group were taken out of the EU on a Slovak government plane.
Trinh Xuan Thanh did not travel with his own passport but with a new passport specially issued by Vietnamese diplomats under a false name. This passport does not have an EU entry stamp. Therefore, boarding a government plane was one of the kidnappers‘ few options to leave Europe with Trinh Xuan Thanh.
According to Dennik’s report, the other defendants are believed to be members of Vietnam’s secret service. Their names are not known. Thoibao.de contacted the Slovak newspaper to finds out the names of these indicted people, we will notify later. The defendants were also accused of paying $2 million to unidentified Slovakians to carry out the kidnapping.
The charges mean those affected could be extradited to Slovakia as soon as they are in a country with which Slovakia has an extradition agreement. They can then be brought to justice there.
The prosecuting authority is Slovakia’s National Crime Agency NAKA.
