The person on the heart of allegations of incest, fraud and abusing freedoms has appealed towards his five-year jail sentence.
Le Tung Van from the Peng Lei Home Buddhist Church, now often called Thien Am on the Fringe of the Universe, was sentenced on July 21 on costs of “abusing democratic freedoms”.
Police have since suspended investigations into claims the church was an incest cult whose leaders personally profited from charitable donations.
Le’s lawyer, Dang Dinh Manh of the Ho Chi Minh Metropolis Bar Affiliation, introduced the accused to the Duc Hoa district individuals’s courtroom to file an enchantment, accompanied by a workforce of protection legal professionals.
Le raised 5 factors to claim his innocence. He mentioned he didn’t offend the Vietnamese Buddhist Church in Lengthy An province, or the Duc Hoa district police. He mentioned, quite the opposite, he and members of his group suffered years of humiliation and slander.
Le repeated a name made at his trial for his accusers to face as much as him and make their claims in courtroom.
The church chief accused 5 organizations of persecuting his faith: The Duc Hoa district Police Company, the Lengthy An provincial Police Division, the Duc Hoa district Individuals’s Procuracy, the Lengthy An province’s Individuals’s Procuracy and the Individuals’s Court docket.
He known as on the appeals courtroom to drop the fees towards him and his colleagues and free them instantly and unconditionally.
Le’s lawyer Dang Dinh Manh advised RFA that he and 4 associates believed the Duc Hoa district courtroom had unfairly tried six members of Peng Lei due to not less than 22 procedural violations.
“With Le Tung Van’s enchantment we hope the appeals courtroom will attain a verdict in accordance with the regulation, declaring there was no crime beneath Article 331 of the Legal Code,” he mentioned.
“If we’ve got a assure that the procedural laws will likely be strictly carried out, it should have a really optimistic impression on the coverage of constructing a state based mostly on the rule of regulation, restore individuals’s belief within the regulation and improve the status of the prosecuting businesses.”
Up to now solely Le has filed an enchantment however lawyer Dao Kim Lan mentioned he believed the six others charged to be harmless.
“Personally, as a lawyer immediately concerned within the case and accessing all of the information, I decide that my shoppers haven’t dedicated a criminal offense in response to the fees and paperwork and proof proven within the case file,” he mentioned.