Tears of a Mother: Family Pleads with Government to Save Daughter Facing Execution in Vietnam

A family in Weithaga village, Murang’a County, is desperately calling for help as their daughter faces imminent execution in Vietnam for drug trafficking.

Led by the matriarch Purity Wangui, the family is seeking the intervention of the government to save their 37-year-old daughter, Margaret Nduta, who was sentenced to death on March 6 after being convicted of trafficking two kilos of cocaine through Vietnam.

“The government should help us appeal. Let my daughter be brought back home and jailed here,” Wangui urges. Family friend Alex Murumba has also called on Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi to intervene and bring Nduta back to Kenya.

Murang’a Senator Joe Nyutu has also echoed these concerns, calling on the government to help Nduta secure an appeal and reunite her with her family.

The family had until midnight on March 12 to appeal the conviction, failing which the Vietnamese government would begin making arrangements to execute her by lethal injection.

Nduta was arrested in July 2023 at Ho Chi Minh City while en route to neighbouring Laos.

She claims that she was hired by a man known only as “John” to deliver a suitcase to a woman at the airport, who was to receive a parcel in return. She insists that she had no knowledge of any illicit contents and had received Sh167,000 in advance, with her flight tickets paid for.

The woman was cleared at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and other international airports before being arrested in Vietnam.

Her family, particularly her mother, is struggling to come to terms with the fact that the woman they raised as a devout Christian is now condemned for drug-related offences.

Wangui, who describes her daughter as a “straightforward” individual, says, “We are devastated as a family. We are not sure that Nduta, who we know as a straightforward daughter who only ventured out of the country in 2023 to seek her fortune, became a drug peddler.”

Desperation has taken hold of Wangui, who is determined to see her daughter one last time before the execution. “I am waiting for some family members to volunteer to accompany me there. It does not matter how long it takes… I must see her before they hang her,” she says.

However, the prospect of travelling to Vietnam on short notice is daunting due to her financial constraints. She added, “What is the distance from my womb to the world all this long I have been her mother?” upon learning that Vietnam is over 8,000 kilometres away from her village.