Crime & Justice

Singapore plans 2nd execution for drug trafficking in less than a month

Singapore, May 16 (EFE).- Singapore’s authorities have notified the family of a prisoner accused of trafficking 1.5 kilograms of marijuana that his execution will take place on Wednesday, less than a month after another man was hanged for attempted drug trafficking of 1 kilogram of cannabis.

The family members of the 37-year-old Singaporean of Malay ethnicity were informed on May 10, a week before the hanging – the method employed by Singapore – the usual protocol in such cases, the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), a local nonprofit that advocates for the abolition of death penalty, said.

TJC spokesperson Kirsten Han told EFE on Tuesday that there was no response from the authorities after the courts requested that the case be reopened alleging that the DNA and fingerprint evidence linked him to a stash of less than 1.5 kilograms.

Singapore has some of the world’s most draconian laws against drug use and trafficking, with smuggling of 500 grams or above of marijuana being punishable by death.

The news of the planned execution of the Singaporean, whose identity his family prefers not to reveal, comes just three weeks after the city-state carried out its first execution of the year, of a 46-year-old Tamil origin man, Tangaraju Suppiah, on Apr. 26.

His execution was slammed by human rights organizations while the UN had asked Singapore to halt it due to “concerns about due process and respect for fair trial guarantees” since the man’s lawyers and family members affirmed that he had never touched or seen the drug that he had been accused of conspiring to traffic.

After a halt in executions for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Singapore hanged a record 11 prisoners in just a few months, including an intellectually disabled heroin trafficker whose sentence also drew criticism from the international community. EFE

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