Vietnam released a detained pro-democracy lawyer Saturday, the second activist freed in a week, two days before the first US visit by a post-war Vietnamese head of state, state media said. Le Quoc Quan, 36, had been arrested in early March, shortly after returning from a five-month fellowship with the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) organisation.
His arrest, part of a wider human rights crackdown in the communist country this year, triggered sharp protests from the United States. "Le Quoc Quan, who is being held in temporary custody for violating Vietnamese law, was released to reunite with his family on the morning of June 16," the state-run Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported Saturday. The VNA report said Quan had made a "sincere declaration of guilt during his temporary detention for investigation."
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