Vietnam has sentenced eight heroin traffickers to death, a court official said Friday, raising to more than 40 the number of drug smugglers to receive the death penalty over the past month.
Heroin, most of it from the 'Golden Triangle' countries of Myanmar and Laos, is the most popular illegal drug in Vietnam and - because it is often injected with shared needles - the leading cause of HIV infections.
In the latest trial, the Hanoi people's court also jailed 29 others, 18 of them for life, for trafficking some 19 kilogrammes (42 pounds) of heroin across the country's mountainous north over two years, a court clerk told AFP.
Working a common trafficking route, the gang had smuggled the heroin from the north-western highlands province of Son La near the Lao border and sold it in the capital Hanoi and the port of Haiphong, the court heard.
Communist Vietnam, like most Asian countries, imposes harsh penalties for drug smugglers. Those caught with over 600 grammes of heroin or 20 kilogrammes of opium, its raw material, are sentenced to death by firing squad.
Since late November, Vietnamese courts have sentenced at least 43 people to death and jailed scores more in several group trials against heroin smuggling syndicates, often extended family and clan networks.