The People's Procuracy of Cai Nuoc District, Ca Mau Province, announced on June 6 that it would issue a public apology to a local man who was wrongly imprisoned for over a year.

Le Minh Nhut accused of robbery

Le Minh Nhut, born in 1988, and two other men were accused of robbery and arrested in mid-2015 after a man went to the police to report robbery on June 2, 2015. According to the man, he parked his motorbike near Luong The Tran Bridge to take a call but three men on two motorbikes suddenly hit and beat him before taking away his VND3.7m (USD163) mobile phone.

Nhut, Nguyen Vu Ca and Nguyen Hoang Khang confessed to the crime to the investigators. But when a trial was opened in December 2015, they claimed they were innocent, saying that their statements were taken under duress. The Cai Nuoc People's Court returned the case to the local people's procuracy for lack of information. The People's Procuracy of Cai Nuoc District then suspended the case for lack of evidence the following year.

The People's Procuracy of Cai Nuoc District will publicly apologise to Nhut on June 13.

Last year, Cai Nuoc People's Court ordered the people's procuracy to compensate Nhut VND172m (USD7,500). It was later reduced to VND137m. The local people's procuracy was ordered to publish the apology on three consecutive issues of two newspapers.

Two other men, Nguyen Vu Ca and Nguyen Hoang Khang, were also compensated VND132m (USD5,800) and VND175m respectively. On March 22, Ca Mau People's Court accepted Ca's appeal and ordered the Cai Nuoc People's Procuracy to compensate another VND56m.

Dtinews