The Reverend Than Van Truong was released on September 17, after being imprisoned and mistreated in the Bien Hoa Mental Hospital in Vietnam's Dong Nai Province for nearly a year.

A former officer in Vietnam's Peoples' Army, Rev Truong became a Christian and eventually a pastor in the Baptist General Conference house church organization in Vietnam.

His troubles began several years ago, when he sent to Bibles to Vietnam's top officials with an encouragement to consult the Scriptures for truth and wisdom. He was arrested in May 2003, and imprisoned without charges for nine months.

After that he was kept under close surveillance until his second arrest in June 2004.

This time, again unable to lay any criminal charges against him, the Dong Nai Province prosecuting authorities diagnosed him as 'delusional' and had him committed to a high security section of the Bien Hoa Mental Hospital.

On his arrival at the hospital on September 30 2004, he was injected with unknown drugs and became ill and very lethargic. Later, when he was given oral medication, he managed not to ingest it and his condition improved.

According to a report written by Rev Truong on 20 June 2005, he was transferred to an open ward of the hospital, which he shares with a number of seriously ill psychiatric patients, a number of whom have attacked him on occasion.

CSW campaigned at high levels on Rev Truong's case.

The growing international attention to the case frustrated and angered the Vietnamese authorities. The Dong Nai Province prosecuting authorities and the Bien Hoa mental hospital began to blame each other and neither would take responsibility for the situation.

The prosecuting authorities laid no criminal charges against Rev Truong, and a sympathetic doctor at the hospital told his wife that he showed no signs of any mental disorder.

In recent weeks no drugs had been administered to him, and his health further improved. He resumed his evangelistic activity and even baptized some fellow patients.

His hospital discharge paper, obtained by CSW, maintains the diagnosis for Rev Truong was 'confusion and delusion', and the pharmacist order on the paper was for him to 'regularly take medication'.

Rev Truong's wife, Mrs Kim, collected him and took him home to Ho Chi Minh City.

Rev Truong is currently consulting a Christian lawyer in Vietnam to determine whether he should sue the authorities for damages.

The release of Rev Truong brings to eight the number of Christian prisoners or mental hospital inmates who were prisoners of conscience, released this year.

Others remain incarcerated and Vietnam steadfastly maintains it has never imprisoned anyone for religious reasons.

Stuart Windsor, CSW's National Director, said, "We are delighted that Pastor Truong has been released and is back with his family. It is hard for us to imagine the torment he must have experienced simply for standing up for his faith.

"On this occasion, international advocacy has borne fruit relatively quickly and this is a great encouragement to us in our work. We will continue to put pressure on the Vietnamese authorities to treat all their citizens with dignity and respect, regardless of their religious or political beliefs."

CSW is a human rights organisation which specialises in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.

Notes to editors.

The authorities of Dong Nai Province accused Rev Truong of 'propagandising to oppose the Socialist Republic of Vietnam' under Article 88 of the Criminal Code (decision no. 12, dated 9 May 2003). He was imprisoned from 27 May 2003 to 20 January 2004 in the B5 Ministry of the Public Security Prison in Dong Nai Province by temporary detention order no. 5, dated 9 May 2003, and extension of temporary detention order (no. 1739/KSDT), dated 24 September 2003.

Rev Truong was then kept under village arrest in his locality for no stated reason by order no. 01, dated 26 January 2004. He was arrested a second time and imprisoned in the B5 Ministry of Public Security Prison in Dong Nai from 3 June 2004 until 9 September 2004. The catalyst for his arrest was his departure to visit his 96-year-old mother in the north, without permission to travel. Authorities had previously ignored his requests for the relevant permission.

When he was arrested, the authorities confiscated 20 copies of the Bible from him, which had been printed officially by the Religious Publishing House in Hanoi.

Legal officials diagnosed him as being 'hysterical and delirious' and he was sent to the Bien Hoa Mental Hospital for treatment.

Rev Truong maintained that he was entirely sane. This assessment was supported not only by his written reports and recorded interviews, but also by a doctor, who twice informed Rev Truong's wife that he is not mentally ill, and that he had reported this to prison officials. The same officials, however, informed the doctor that they had 'orders from above' to hold him.

Rev Truong was also administered injections and pills at the hospital, and expressed fear for his life if forced to continually ingest his medication. This method of silencing prisoners of conscience was employed in the former USSR.

Before his conversion to Christianity, Rev Truong served as an officer in Vietnam's People's Army, and as a political cadre. In 1996 he began to serve as a pastor, and has faced constant persecution since then. As a member of the Communist Party, he wrote a letter in which he asked Vietnam's leaders to abandon Marxist-Leninism and turn to the truth of the Bible. Commentators believe Rev Truong's conversion to Christianity to be the root of the harassment he has faced at the hands of the authorities.

Although his situation was known by a few, it became much better known when he was 'discovered' by visitors of Mennonite prisoner Ms Le Thi Hong Lien after Rev Truong gave her a Bible. Ms Lien, who suffered a mental breakdown after serious abuse in prison had been transferred to the Bien Hoa Mental Hospital in late February 2005 after intensive international advocacy, and was there until being set free in April.

After Rev Truong was discovered, regular updates on his situation and details of his treatment made it possible for human rights advocacy groups to launch a worldwide campaign on his behalf.

A mental hospital committee assigned the task of re-evaluating Rev Truong continued to find him 'delusional' because he insisted on his belief in God.

Rev Truong wrote exceptionally lucid reports about his own mistreatment and about some deplorable conditions in the mental hospital. A Vietnam expert who has read them, said, 'Like some of the writing out of the Soviet gulags, these deserve to be published. They hold the Vietnamese system up to ridicule but also engender a deep sympathy for those who have to endure its excesses'.

Although Rev Truong's release comes as good news, Christians have continued to experience harassment at the hands of the authorities. This occurs despite the introduction of three legal documents during the past year, which, it has claimed, would allow religious communities to be freer to exercise their rights.