Off to Court

News photos out of Saigon last week showed two Vietnamese soldiers ushering through a courtroom door a little man in white who seemed so weak that he had to be held on his feet. He was Ngo Dinh Can, 50, brother of South Viet Nam's two murdered ex-leaders, Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, and once the tough overlord of central Viet Nam. While Can ruled, the Viet Cong moved warily in the region, but he made lots of other enemies as well. Fleeing for his life after the anti-Diem coup, Can sought asylum in the U.S. consulate in Hue.

But U.S. diplomats turned Can over to Big Minh's junta, on the understanding that he would be granted something more than the summary judgment meted out to Diem and Nhu, whose bullet-riddled corpses reportedly lie buried in the courtyard of Saigon's Joint

General Staff headquarters. In jail, Can fell ill from acute diabetes. Hauled from the hospital last week, he underwent a preliminary hearing preparatory to trial for so-called crimes against the state.

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