Did Loan’s action violate the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war? Photographer Eddie Adams recalled that on his last visit to the pizza parlor, he had seen written on a toilet wall, “We know who you are, fucker”. Nguyen Ngọc Loan died of cancer on 14 July 1998, aged 67, in Burke, Virginia. In 1991, he was forced into retirement when he was recognized and his identity publicly disclosed. suburb of Burke, Virginia at Rolling Valley Mall called “Les Trois Continents”. He opened a pizza restaurant in the Washington, D.C. After an Australian hospital refused to treat him, he was transferred to the United States, where he was met with a massive (though unsuccessful) campaign to deport him. A few months after the execution picture was taken, Loan was seriously wounded by machine-gun fire that led to the amputation of his leg.įollowing the war, he was reviled wherever he went. Sadly, the photograph’s legacy would haunt Loan for the rest of his life. What happened to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan after the war? He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have, but I’ve felt bad for him and his family for a long time… I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, “I’m sorry. What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two, or three American people?’… ![]() People believe them but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. Still, photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. The general killed the Viet Cong I killed the general with my camera. Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. He felt so bad for Loan that he apologized for having taken the photo at all, admitting, “The general killed the Vietcong I killed the general with my camera”. Adams wrote in Time in 1998: Photographer said he had a lot of sympathy for the shooter and wished he had never published the picture. 38 revolver, executed Lém with a single shot in the head. Lém was brought to Loan who questioned him briefly then using his personal. Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution. Corroborating this, Lém was captured at the site of a mass grave that included the bodies of at least seven police family members. South Vietnamese sources said that Lém commanded a Vietcong death squad, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers’ families. Vietcong officer Nguyen Van Lem under arrest. ![]() Regardless, it instantly became an icon of the war’s savagery and made the official pulling the trigger – General Nguyen Ngoc Loan – its iconic villain. ![]() What Adams’ photograph doesn’t reveal is that the man being shot (named Nguyen Van Lem) was the captain of a Vietcong “revenge squad” that had executed dozens of unarmed civilians earlier the same day. A fitting quote for Adams, because his 1968 photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head at point-blank range not only earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 but also went a long way toward souring Americans’ attitudes about the Vietnam War.įor all the image’s political impact, though, the situation wasn’t as black-and-white as it’s rendered. “Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world”, AP photojournalist Eddie Adams once wrote. The gif from the execution (graphic images!). A closer look at the photo actually reveals the bullet exiting his skull. Taken a split second after the trigger was pulled, Lem’s final expression is one of pain as the bullet rips through his head. 1, 1968.Īfter Nguyen Ngoc Loan raised his sidearm and shot Vietcong operative Nguyen Van Lem in the head he walked over to the reporters and told them that: “These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me”.Ĭaptured on NBC TV cameras and by AP photographer Eddie Adams, the picture and film footage flashed around the world and quickly became a symbol of the Vietnam War’s brutality.Įddie Adams’ picture was especially striking, as the moment frozen is one almost at the instant of death. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, shoots Vietcong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street on Feb.
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