AMERICAN PILOTS TO BE TRIED

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31117, 21 July 1966, Page 15

AMERICAN PILOTS TO BE TRIED

Statement By North Vietnam Diplomat

(K.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright) PEKING, July 20. Captured American pilots in Vietnam will face trial as war criminals, North Vietnam’s Ambassador announced in Peking yesterday.

The Ambassador, Tran Du Binh, who made the statement in answer to questions at a press conference, said American pilots who had taken part in the bombing of North Vietnam “cannot be considered as prisoners of war and cannot benefit from the Geneva Convention.”

The pilots were regarded as war criminals and would be “put on trial and judged by the Vietnamese people, according to Vietnamese law,” he declared. His statement parallelled one by North Vietnam’s Ambassador in Prague, Phan Van Su. who told reporters that American airmen would “stand trial at our courts of law.” The North Vietnamese Ambassador in Peking did not indicate when the airmen would be put on trial, nor did he state precisely what charge they would face. Tran Tu Binh reiterated that his government’s precondition for any negotiations for peace talks was the withdrawal of United States forces from Vietnam. South Vietnam will release about 18 of its estimated 400 North Vietnamese prisoners

.today in what is regarded by lobservers as a broad hint for i Hanoi to relax its tough attitude towards the 80 American servicemen believed to be held by North Vietnam. Regular Soldiers The 18 captives, all identified as North Vietnamese regular soldiers captured in battle this year, will be freed at the main bridge spanning the Ben Hai river between North and South Vietnam. Their release will mark “National Shame Day”—the 12th anniversary of the ; Geneva agreements which partitioned Vietnam. The United States at present has no control of North Vietnamese captives in South Vietnam. American troops are instructed to hand over all prisoners taken in battle to the South Vietnamese authorities. The only North Vietnamese prisoners held by the United States are 18 sailors captured on July 1' when their three torpedo boats were sunk by American planes in the Gulf of Tonkin.

American officials say they are still being interrogated. ' But while Hanoi continues its threats to put captive American airmen on trial as war criminals, the United States command is quietly taking steps to improve the treatment of North Vietnamese prisoners in South Vietnam. The intention is to keep the captives in American hands until they can be transferred to new prisoner-of-war camps being built by the government, instead of them being thrown into gaols with terrorists, murderers and common criminals. In South Vietnam, there have been well-authenticated reports in the past of brutal treatment of captives by government forces, including torture. According to a government spokesman, however, North Vietnamese captives here have “always been treated humanely as prisoners of war.” When South Vietnam released 23 North Vietnamese prisoners as a New Year good-will gesture in January, three of them chose to remain in South Vietnam. The others defiantly threw off their Saigon-supplied clothes as they crossed the bridge into the north. Answering questions yesterday, the South Vietnamese Premier, Nguyen Cao Ky, said he did not believe North Vietnam would risk putting captured American pilots on trial for war crimes.