Prosecutor's Office: Filing of Charges in Case of Vietnamese Kidnapping Unlawful

Bratislava, 1 June (TASR) - The charges pressed by an investigator of the former National Crime Agency (NAKA) in the case of the abduction of a Vietnamese national was unlawful in its entirety, according to the opinion of the supervising prosecutor, which was provided to TASR by spokeswoman for the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Bratislava Gabriela Kovacova. The investigator's procedure clearly violated the Penal Code, established case law, penal law theory and legally binding European Union instruments. The accusation and, in particular, the procedure by which it was arrived at bordered on arbitrariness on the part of the investigator of the former NAKA. "In that case, extremely extensive evidence was collected, which goes well beyond the evidence taken in similar cases. The investigating officer of the Internal Affairs Inspectorate (UIS) procured all available evidence that could contribute to the clarification of the case and the identification of the perpetrator. To that end, he interviewed every witness who was even minimally likely to have any knowledge," said the spokeswoman, adding that in addition to the questioning of a large number of persons, a number of documents, expert statements, legal aid acts and other evidence were also procured. She also stressed that the UIS investigator has been extremely thorough in his approach to the evidence so far. Vietnamese businessman and official of the local Communist Party Trinh Xuan Thanh was kidnapped from Berlin to Vietnam in July 2017. The Vietnamese national was applying for asylum in Germany and thus was under the official protection of the German authorities. In this context, Germany was looking into a possible Slovak lead in the kidnapping with the possible misuse of a Slovak government aircraft In 2018, courts in Germany sentenced Long N. H. [name abbreviated due to legal reasons] to almost four years in jail over his participation in the kidnapping. On January 30, 2023, another defendant, L. Anh Tu, was sentenced to five years in jail. am