HANOI: Twelve people were sentenced to death after a Vietnamese court found them guilty Friday of trafficking more than 70kg of heroin, state media said on Saturday. Judges in the five-day trial in the northern province of Quang Ninh also handed life prison terms to eight others, while another nine members of the same gang were jailed for between 18 months and 30 years, the ruling Communist Party’s daily Nhan Dan newspaper said.

The defendants, several of whom were related, were convicted of trafficking the heroin from several northern provinces between 2005 and May 2006.

On Thursday, 15 people were sentenced to death for drug trafficking in two different trials in Hanoi and the central province of Nghe An. Another ten were jailed for life.

Possession of more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 20 kilograms of opium is punishable by death in Vietnam.

At least 90 people have been sentenced to death since the start of the year, mostly for drug trafficking and murder, according to figures compiled by AFP from officials and state media.