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First Posted: 8/6/2013 (AP) Vietnam executed its first prisoner by lethal injection on Tuesday, ending a two-year pause in capital punishment caused by the country's struggle to obtain the needed chemicals, state media reported.
The Communist country decided in 2011 to switch from firing squads to legal injection on humanitarian grounds. But it had been unable to execute anyone because the European Union bans factories from exporting drugs.
It issued a law this year allowing the production of local chemicals to be used in executions, but the source of the drugs used in Tuesday's execution was unclear.
Thanh Nien daily reported that Nguyen Anh Tuan, a 27-year-old man condemned to death in 2010 for murdering a woman, was executed in a Hanoi prison on Tuesday.
There are currently 586 people on the death row in Vietnam, the paper said.
In an interview earlier this year, European Union ambassador to Vietnam Franz Jessen said Vietnam might not have realized the practical implications of changing to lethal injections when it announced its plan to switch from the firing squad. He said the EU had hoped difficulties in sourcing the chemicals might have triggered a moratorium on the death penalty in the country.
Vietnam, a one-party-ruled state that routinely sentences government critics to long prison terms, is under considerable international pressure to improve its human rights record, which most observers say has gotten worse over the last two years. The EU considers the death penalty a human rights issue, unlike the United States.
EU factories are the main supplier of drugs that can be used in executions. Several American states have also said objections from European factories were making it hard to find the chemicals.
<a title="Associated Press" href="http://www.ap.org" class="url org fn">Associated Press</a>

Vietnam executes 1st prisoner by lethal injection