Nguyen Van Lem

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General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executes Nguyen Van Lem.

Nguyen Van Lem was the real name of Captain Bay Lop (died 1 February 1968 in Saigon), a member of the Viet Cong who was summarily executed in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. The execution was captured on film by photojournalist Eddie Adams, and the momentous image became a symbol of hostility to the war. The execution was explained at the time as being the consequence of Lem's suspected guerrilla activity and war crimes, and otherwise due to a general "wartime mentality."

On the second day of Tet, amid fierce street fighting, Lem was captured and brought to Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, then Chief of the Republic of Viet Nam National Police. Using his personal sidearm, General Loan summarily executed Lem in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement; Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph.

South Vietnamese sources said that Lem commanded a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers' families; these sources said that Lem was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. (In some accounts, the deputy was a victim as well; in others, the number of murdered relatives were as few as six.) Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution. Lem's widow confirmed that her husband was a member of the Viet Cong and she did not see him after the Tet Offensive began. Shortly after the execution, a South Vietnamese official who had not been present said that Lem was only a political operative.

Though military lawyers have yet to definitively decide whether Loan's action violated the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war (Lem had not been wearing a uniform nor fighting enemy soldiers in the alleged commission of war crimes), where POW status was granted independently of the laws of war it was limited to Viet Cong seized during military operations.^[1] Those designated as guerrillas were subject only to the laws of the South Vietnamese government, which was often less willing to grant rights to the enemy especially compared to other non-communist countries.