A South African Man, Tyron Lee Coetzee, has been sentenced to death after a Vietnamese court found him guilty of attempting to traffic almost 1.5kg of cocaine.
The Ho Chi Minh City Law confirmed the conviction after a half-day trial in Vietnam’s capital.
In May 2017, it was reported that Coetzee’s trial had been postponed pending a psychiatric assessment.
Coetzee had travelled from South Africa to Brazil in June 2016; he was allegedly given a black backpack by a Nigerian man identified only as Oden.
He then went to Brazil then Vietnam, after a stopover in Dubai, only to be arrested with the 1.5 kilograms of cocaine at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport in June 2016.
Coetzee admitted he had agreed to smuggle the drugs for a cash fee of almost R50,000 to be paid upon his arrival in Ho Chi Minh City.
