The United States set the stage for a new human rights row with Vietnam, flinging a sharp rebuke Hanoi's way after three dissidents were jailed for contacting US-based opposition activists.
Sentences handed down Wednesday on Nguyen Vu Viet, 27, Nguyen Truc Cuong, 36 and their sister Nguyen Thi Hoa, 44, contravened international norms, the State Department said.
The trio, sentenced to five, four and three years respectively, are related to a Catholic priest jailed after testifying to the US Commission for International Religious Freedom.
Their case threatened to reignite a war of words between Hanoi and Washington, which resonates in the US Congress, where a move is under way to link Vietnam's non-humanitarian aid to its human rights performance.
"The United States strongly condemns the harsh sentences handed down in Vietnam to three Vietnamese for sending information about their uncle, incarcerated Catholic priest Nguyen Van Ly, to US-based organizations," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
"The United States reminds the government of Vietnam of its obligations to fully respect international standards for human rights to which it has freely adhered," Boucher said.
"It also calls upon the Vietnamese government to respect an individual's rights to fair and open trials, transparency in the judicial process, and access to qualified legal counsel."
Boucher said the sentencing of the three dissidents violated "international standards for the protection of human rights."
Court officials in Vietnam said the three dissidents were accused of "abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens."
The charges were reduced from espionage, which carries a minimum 12-year penalty, to the new indictments, which could have sent them to jail for up to seven years.
US diplomats were denied entry to the trial despite repeated requests for access to government officials, and none of the defendents were offered legal counsel, Boucher said.
Father Ly, 57, was placed under house arrest in March 2001 a month after giving written testimony to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a watchdog body backed by the US Congress.
He was sentenced to 15 years in jail in October 2001. In a move seen as an attempt to appease human rights critics, a court reduced the sentence to 10 years in July.
Legislation introduced in July in the US Congress seeks to cap non-humanitarian aid at 2003 levels unless Vietnam meets a series of human rights benchmarks.
Though there is little chance of the measure becoming law, it stirred anger in Hanoi, where the government reacts angrily to US criticisms of its human rights record.
Post-war US-Vietnam relations reached a high point in late 2000 when then-president Bill Clinton visited the country on the last major foreign trip of his eight years in the White House.
But in the last three years they have soured over successive rows over human rights.
In the last heated exchanges between Washington and Hanoi, the State Department condemned the jailing of a so-called cyberdissident, Pham Hong Son.
Pham last month saw his 13-year prison sentence cut to five years by the Supreme Court at appeal, but Washington said he should never have been arrested at all.
Formal US-Vietnam relations were only established in 1995, a year after Clinton lifted a trade embargo on country.
Another high-point came in the signing of the landmark, tariff-slashing US-Vietnam bilateral trade pact in July 2000 after six years of tortuous negotiations. It came into force in December 2001.