- Title: VIETNAM: POW ACTIVIST STAYS ON IN HANOI DESPITE BEING ASKED TO LEAVE
- Date: 22nd June 1994
- Summary: HANOI, VIETNAM (RECENT)(RTV - ACCESS ALL) 1. SV UNITED STATES (U.S.) MISSING IN ACTION (MIA) OFFICE 0.12 2. SCU HENDON CHAINED TO GATES OF MIA OFFICE 0.33 3. SV U.S. PRISONER OF WAR ACTIVIST, BILL HENDON, SPEAKING TO REPORTERS (ENGLISH) 0.41 4. SCU HENDON SPEAKING (ENGLISH) 0.53 5. SV REPATRIATION CEREMONY 1.05 6. SCU OF
- Embargoed: 7th July 1994 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HANOI, VIETNAM
- City:
- Country: Vietnam
- Reuters ID: LVA37AWGABOPMJ83C821M0L5VNO3
- Story Text: United States (U.S.) prisoner of war (POW) activist Bill Hendon stayed on in Hanoi on Friday (June 9) despite being asked to leave by the Vietnamese government.
Hours after Hendon's visa expired at midnight on Thursday, there was no sign that Vietnamese authorities would force him to leave, and a stalemate between him and United States (U.S.) government officials persisted.
Vietnam declared the Republican former congressman from North Carolina persona non grata on Thursday and told him to leave when his visa expired at midnight.
Hendon had spent six days in Vietnam demanding U.S. officials investigate his claim that Vietnam is holding U.S. POWs in an underground prison at a top security Vietnamese military base called Hung Hoa in a mountainside about 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Hanoi.
Vietnam, which says it released all American POWs in 1973, denied the charge and accused him of trying to sabotage improving U.S.-Vietnamese relations.
Earlier in the week, Hendon handcuffed himself to the outside of the gate of the U.S. MIA (Missing in Action) office in Hanoi to press home his claims.
The U.S. military brought in a Bangkok-based investigator of so-called "live sighting" reports of captive Americans on Monday after Hendon made public his claim that U.S. POWs were held at the underground jail.
The United States is trying to determine the fate of 2,204 MIAs in Indochina, 1,618 of them in Vietnam, as a matter of national priority.
On Tuesday the U.S. sent home six boxes of remains believed to be of U.S. airmen or soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.
In an official tribute, U.S. military and civilian officials and a few members of their families saluted the caskets on board a U.S. transport plane at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport.
The repatriation of six boxes of MIA remains took to 24 the number sent back this year for forensic tests.
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