Airport officials seize illegally imported military equipment

Customs officials last Friday caught a Vietnamese American passenger identified only as Ha Ba transporting US military equipment and uniforms in a flight from the US to Vietnam.

Customs officials last Friday caught a Vietnamese American passenger identified only as Ha Ba transporting US military equipment and uniforms in a flight from the US to Vietnam.

The discovery was made at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City August 20. The items that were not declared to the customs or on the list of banned imports by the Ministry of National Defense.

One day earlier, airport officials had seized an airgun, SLAVIA 636, illegally carried from Hong Kong to Vietnam by a Vietnamese man named Nguyen Van Dieu.

In July alone, the airport customs agency has uncovered six cases in which passengers transported banned items including military uniforms, five VCD disks, three video tapes linked to reactionary organizations and eight airguns from foreign countries to Vietnam.

In related news, the forest management agency at Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Part said that their officials had on August 19 intercepted an illegal transport of 300kg of explosives.

Seven people carrying the dynamite on their backs through forests from Laos, ran away, leaving the explosives behind.

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