A prominent US trained lawyer agreed in court on Wednesday his efforts to bring multi-party democracy to communist ruled Vietnam amounted to subversion, an offence that can mean a death sentence.

Le Cong Dinh and three co-defendants are accused of activities meant to end communist rule, including blogging, making contact with "hostile" groups abroad and, in Dinh's case, attending a class on non violent political change.
 

Human rights groups and Western governments have criticised the trial as a sham and called for the immediate release of the four defendants, saying they were guilty of nothing more than exercising their right to free speech.
 

Some analysts view the case as part of a politically motivated clampdown on dissent in the sensitive months before the ruling Communist Party's national congress, which will anoint new leaders and set the tone for future policy next January.
 

Speaking calmly and confidently with both hands on a lectern, Dinh, 41, said the banned Democratic Party of Vietnam, of which he is a member, intended to call for pluralism and wanted to bring about a change in the political system.
 

"I admit I violated Article 79," he added, referring to the penal code entry on subversion.
 

Vietnamese courts sometimes lighten sentences for defendants who have made contributions to the state or appear contrite.
 

Prosecutors decided late last year to charge Dinh, Nguyen Tien Trung, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc and Le Thang Long under Article 79, ratcheting up the severity of the case from earlier charges of spreading propaganda against the state under Article 88, which is more commonly used in dissident cases.
 

The indictment, read out in court, said the case was "extremely serious" and was "prejudicial to national security".
 

Trung, 26, who founded a pro-democracy youth group, told the court he had made mistakes due to "ebullience" and inexperience and admitted that actions he had taken violated the law.
 

"I really regret my actions because they have affected my family and friends," he said.

High-profile case
The involvement of Dinh and Trung has raised the profile of the case abroad.
 

Dinh studied at Tulane University on a Fulbright scholarship and had met numerous US officials and members of Congress. Trung studied in France and had met US President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
 

Dinh, Trung and Thuc, a former Internet company director, face a minimum of 12 years in prison and a maximum sentence of death. Long, who worked with Thuc, faces up to 15 years in jail.
 

Journalists and diplomats watched the proceedings by closed circuit television in a separate room in the courthouse. Police confiscated cameras and recording devices.
 

Thuc's relatives were banned from the trial and stood in the rain outside the court waiting for information.
 

Security was tight at the courthouse, with more than a dozen police outside the gate and around the facility. About six police with riot helmets manned a security checkpoint inside the gate.

Government control
Brad Adams, director of the Asia division of the US based watchdog Human Rights Watch, said charging the four with the capital crime of attempting to overthrow the government showed that Vietnam's hostility towards free speech and peaceful dissent was growing ahead of the party congress.
 

"Vietnam should stop criminalising and imprisoning government critics for simply exercising their right to freedom of speech, and begin respecting its obligations under the human rights conventions it has signed," he said.
 

The US consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Kenneth Fairfax, said the State Department had called for the defendants' immediate release. He said the crimes the four were charged with "are all internationally accepted human rights".
 

Source: Reuters