Americans Convicted of Terrorism in Vietnam

A judge sentenced 3 Americans and 4 Vietnamese to 15 months in prison for plotting to smuggle radio equipment into Vietnam to broadcast a call for a revolution to topple the government.

The presiding judge Vu-Phi-Long said the crimes were "particularly serious and encroach on national security " and deserved serious punishment, but also said that the accused deserved leniency because they expressed remorse and had no previous criminal records.

The accused had been in jail since for more than a year and the sentence given to them was with credit to the time they already served in prison,so they are expected to be freed by next month and the Americans will be deported within 10 days of their release.

The defendents were accused of bringing 14 radio transmitters and five generators into Vietnam in early 2005, allegedly planning to electronically seize control of the Voice of Vietnam Radio and call for an uprising against the government.

Prosecutors linked the seven to Nguyen Huu Chanh, main accused in recent years of plotting to bomb Vietnamese embassies. He is currently detained in South Korea. Chanh is a member of a US-based group called "Government of Free Vietnam".

The Free Vietnam movement is also accused for hatching a plot against an embassy in the Philippines, a failed bomb attack at the embassy in Thailand, a bomb blast that injured a guard at the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia in 2001.

President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be in Vietnam next week for the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Both countries had been eager to resolve the case before Vietnam's biggest-ever international event begins.