The court, under the Supreme People’s Court in HCM City, confirmed a 16-year sentence for Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, and five years for Le Cong Dinh. However, it reduced the sentence for Le Thang Long to three and a half years from the original five. 

Another defendant involved in the case, Nguyen Tien Trung, who was sentenced to seven years in prison at the first-stance trial, did not appeal. 

Local authorities will keep all the four defendants under surveillance for between three and five years after serving their sentences. 

Speaking in defence for himself at the trial, Dinh again admitted his guilt, showed repentance, and begged for a reduction in his sentence. But the jury said the lower court had applied mitigating circumstances for the defendant and the sentence was lighter than the proposed one, therefore it could not further reduce the sentence. 

Meanwhile, Thuc only admitted having made mistakes in his way of thinking but denied his criminal acts aimed at ‘overthrowing the people’s administration’.

The Supreme People’s Procuracy’s representatives reiterated that Thuc wrote documents and disseminated them via blogs and emails, in which he besmeared the Vietnamese Party and State, and called on people to gather in an attempt to topple the administration. 

The jury concluded that the case is a very serious one in which the defendants had infringed national security./.