World 
Joseph Hincks, Time 10 hours ago
Germany Expels Vietnam Ambassador After Public Abduction of Former Hanoi Official
Joseph Hincks, Time 10 hours ago
Germany has given Vietnam's ambassador and its intelligence agency station chief 48 hours to leave the country following accusations that the Vietnamese embassy orchestrated the kidnapping of a former Hanoi government official from a public park in Berlin, the Financial Times reports.
The German foreign office said there was "no serious doubt" that the Vietnamese embassy was involved in the abduction of Trinh Xuan Thanh, who turned himself in to police in Hanoi Monday. On July 23, Berliners had reported seeing armed men detain Thanh in broad daylight in the Tiergarten, a popular inner-city park.
Thanh is wanted on financial mismanagement charges in Vietnam, whose state oil company allegedly incurred losses of $177 million under his stewardship. After leaving PetroVietnam, he forged a political career and climbed as high as the National Assembly in May. But a month later he fell out of favor and was expelled form the ruling Communist party. Hanoi issued an international arrest warrant for Thanh after he fled the country last summer.
At the time of Thanh's disappearance from the Tiergarten, he was simultaneously fighting extradition charges and attempting to claim asylum in Germany.
German diplomats reportedly discussed Thanh's case with their Vietnamese counterparts less than a month before his disappearance. The high-level discussions took place at July's G20 summit in Hamburg, which the non-member Vietnamese delegation had attended as a guest. Martin Schäfer, a spokesman for the German foreign ministry, called the abduction "an extreme breach of trust," according to the FT. Germany also said that his "unprecedented and shocking" disappearance could exert "a huge negative influence" on bilateral relations.
[FT]
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Associated Press 
Associated Press 3 hours ago
Vietnam regrets Germany's comments on exile's kidnapping
Associated Press 3 hours ago 
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam said Thursday that it regretted comments by the German Foreign Ministry accusing Vietnamese intelligence services of kidnapping a former Vietnamese oil executive who's wanted back home on embezzlement charges.
German authorities believe Trinh Xuan Thanh was snatched in Berlin and gave the Vietnamese intelligence attache 48 hours on Wednesday to leave the country.
Thanh faces embezzlement charges, which carry the death penalty. He had sought asylum in Germany but his application had not been processed yet while Vietnamese authorities sought his extradition.
Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang told reporters that the comments were "very regrettable" and that Thanh turned himself in to police in Vietnam on July 31.
"Vietnam always attaches importance to and wishes to develop strategic relations with Germany," she said, without elaborating.
Thanh, 51, disappeared in July last year after he was initially accused of mismanagement at a subsidiary of national oil and gas giant PetroVietnam, resulting in losses of some $150 million. Vietnamese police issued an arrest warrant in September. In March, police opened an investigation into embezzlement over his alleged involvement in a property development project.
Thanh was chairman of PetroVietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation until 2013, when he was appointed to several senior government positions, including vice chairman of Hau Giang province in the southern Mekong Delta.
He was elected to the National Assembly in May 2016, but was dismissed from the Communist-dominated legislature before its first session the following month. He was also stripped of his Communist Party membership.
Vietnam's ambassador to Germany was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and was told that Germany demanded that Thanh be returned so that the asylum and extradition proceedings could be conducted properly.
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