A Vietnamese court yesterday sentenced to 8.5 years imprisonment two prison guards for helping an inmate impregnate a death row female convict so that the latter could avoid execution.

Nguyen Thi Oanh and Nguyen Truong Thien

The Hoa Binh People’s Court sentenced Nguyen Thuyen and Bui Van Quyet to five years and three and a half years’ respectively for “abusing power during public service.”

The two were found to have allowed 41-year-old male prisoner Nguyen Truong Thien access to 40-year-old Nguyen Thi Oanh who was awaiting execution for drug trafficking. Oanh and Thien were being jailed at two distinct cells in a prison in northern Hoa Binh province at the time.

They had sex five times from January to August 2006, resulting in Oanh being pregnant and giving birth to a healthy, 3.4 kg boy in March.

Oanh’s death sentence was shortly after commuted to life imprisonment.

In Vietnam, male and female prisoners are kept strictly apart and under Vietnamese laws, a death sentence is to be commuted to life if a death-row inmate is pregnant or has a child under 3 years old.

The guards were suspended from their jobs and detained in October last year.

Oanh was to face a firing squad last year after losing her appeal against the death sentence she received in 2005 for trading in nearly 7 kg of heroin. Thien was serving a 5-year sentence for fraud.