Legal Aid Fund Established for Refugee

Vietnamese refugees in the Boston area this week established a legal defense fund for Neghia Ngo, the 28-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who allegedly threw a firebomb at a participant in a University forum on Vietnam last week.

University police arrested Ngo Thursday night after he allegedly hurled a Molotov cocktail at Long V. Ngo '68, a speaker at an East Asian legal forum in the Science Center, as the panelist entered a car parked on Oxford St.

Although their last names are the same, the victim and the alleged assistant are not related.

Dr.Tran Van Liem, president of the massachusetts refugee association, said yesterday that a group of concerned refugees in the greater Boston area had recently begun to collect donations for the alleged assailant to pay for bail and attorney's fees. He refused to name the committee's members or to reveal the amount of money collected thus far.

Ted Hartry, director of the Boston office of the International Rescue committee sponsor for Neghia Ngo's immigration last December-said yesterday an "inflamatory" letter written in Vietamese had been circulated around the Boston area refugee community inviting refugees to the Harvard forum.

A copy of the letter, translated by a rescue committee employee, stated that Long V. Ngo was a "Vietnamese communist spy" who only "provoked refugees." The letter exhorted refugees to oppose communism "while blowing up corposes" and to "come see the curse of our people" and the "enemy that has butchered our families."

James Altschul '81, the principal organizer of the forum, said yesterday that he was unaware of the Vietnamese letter. adding that only one refugee. Tran Quang

Tuan, had been specifically invited to the discussion.

Tuan, a leader among local refugees, said yesterday that when he received a letter from Altschul he contacted fellow refugees-whom he refused to name-who composed the Vietnamese letter.

Tuan said Long V. Ngo had "humiliated Vietnamese refugees" and described him as "very dangerous to public opinion."

Long V. Ngo was selected to speak at the forum because he had recently traveled to Vietnam. Altschul said, adding that he had heard the victim was "sympathetic to the current government."

"Iam not a supporter of North Vietnam." Long V. Ngo said yesterday, describing himself as "an independent scholar."

He said the alleged attempt against him was organized by several refugee groups adding that he felt should begin "an investigation of these groups instead of a legal case against this one man."

The 28-year-old Neghia Ngo was unavailable for comment yesterday, but Stephen B.Young'67, who has served as his translator, said the man had been tortured in concentration camps in Vietnam and that he had a "strong sense that moral people have to protest this [communist Vietnamese] inhumanity.