Suspect 'admits' killing Vietnamese chaplain

A 27 year-old man has said he killed Mgr Peter Dao Duc Diem, Chaplain to the Vietnamese community in England, the Missionary News Service report.

If he is found guilty he could face the firing squad.

Vietnamese police say Christopher Thanh Doan, a British citizen, admitted stabbing Mgr Dao after they confronted him with evidence of the crime.

Fr Dao, 63, was found dead in his bedroom at the Truong Giang Hotel in Hue on 25 January. He had been stabbed in the neck several times.

Fr Dao was on his first trip home since the Vietnam war.

Ordained in Saigon in 1969, he became a senior figure in the Vietnamese Catholic community in England after arriving here as a refugee in 1979. He settled in Birmingham, where the first Vietnamese pastoral centre was established.

At the time of his death he was working at the Vietnamese Church in the East End of London.

Fr Dao left Vietnam by sea as one of the 'boat people'. He made 14 attempts to escape - finally getting away in a small boat which drifted for eight days - before he was picked up by a British ship and brought to a refugee camp in Singapore.

The Archbishop of Birmingham the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, who celebrated a Requiem Mass for Dao at St Francis church, Handsworth, said he was "deeply disturbed" by Fr Dao's death.

He said: "For so many years he has been an outstanding chaplain to the Vietnamese community. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham we mourn his loss."