Truong Duy Nhat, Freelance
Medium:Internet
Charge:Anti-State
Imprisoned:May 26, 2013

Nhat, a former reporter with state-controlled newspapers, was first arrested at his home in the central coastal city of Danang, according to news reports. He was flown under police escort the next day to the capital, Hanoi, where he was charged with "abusing democratic freedoms," an anti-state crime under Article 258 of the penal code.

On March 4, 2014, a People's Court in Danang City ruled in a closed trial that 12 entries on Nhat's personal blog violated Article 258. Convictions under the law carry a maximum seven years in prison. Nhat, who maintained his innocence in court testimony, was given a two-year jail term.

A Danang Appeal Court upheld his sentence in a June 26 ruling. Presiding judges refused to allow Nhat's defense lawyer to speak in court about the actual content of his online writing and ordered that sound being fed to an adjoining room where journalists were monitoring the proceedings be cut, according to a Radio Free Asia report.

Nhat had maintained a personal blog known as Nhat Mot Goc Nhin Khac (A Different Point of View) since 2009, according to reports. His posts were frequently critical of the Communist Party-led government and included entries that called for the resignation of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong for their perceived mismanagement. Another article compared a state land seizure in northern Hai Phong province that was resisted by farmers to a case of grassroots resistance during French colonial rule.

Nhat's initial arrest came after he wrote blog posts about a National Assembly censure motion that failed to give scrutinizing lawmakers the option to cast a "no confidence" vote against targeted officials, according to news reports. Police seized his laptop computer, a SIM card and USB flash drive at the time of his arrest. Nhat's blog was disabled soon after his arrest but later reappeared with software embedded that downloaded malware to viewers' computers, according to reports.

In late 2014, he was being held at Hanoi's Thanh Liet B-14 Detention Center, according to the International Federation of Human Rights.

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