Vietnam
Andrede
- it is extreamely difficult to establish a viable court system when it is at war
- it is hard enough for a peaceful country to establish the rule of law in a war torn conflict it is possible
- phoenix program was a drag nets system based on very little evidence
- the program was designed to be tight with defined boundaries and entrenched limits
process
- two days to process
- 3 days before transfer to provincial authorities
- 30 days to construct a trial
- innocent people spent months in jail because of a giant backlog
- this made all who were processed out of the system inevitably became VC sympathizers
- POW's were managed by the US army - they were club med for prisoners - red cross was there
- VCI were put in camps controlled by south vietnam - the conditions were slightly worse
- 160 lawyers and 160 judges had to process 160 k vci cases
- South Vietnam doesn't have its own legal system
complicated legal system
- dossiers were made on all the suspects
- villagers don't leave a very good paper trail
- very hard to prove cases
- the wait times for convicted VCI sympathizers was usually 1 year
- the prisoners were rammed
- large scaled amnesty on national day+ insurgent universities
- wrongfully convicted mingled with ideologues
- the prison camp conditions were so bad it made it easy to sympathize with the vc cause
- the camps were a good example of the brutality and ineptness of the south Vietnam government
Province Interrogation Centers
- CIA trained the vietnamease how to interogate but did not advocate torture
- the vietnamese would torture people anyways when the americans were not around
province security committe
- 3 months to decide the case
page revision: 0, last edited: 09 Nov 2007 17:28