A Singaporean man on death row for drug trafficking was yesterday hanged in the first execution in the city-state in more than two years, rights advocates said.
Singapore, which has harsh anti-drug laws, had halted executions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and last meted out capital punishment in November 2019.
Abdul Kahar Othman, 68, was hanged early yesterday, anti-death penalty advocate Kirsten Han said.
The execution occurred despite pleas from rights advocates, including the UN Human Rights office, to commute Kahar’s sentence to life imprisonment.
Han and several others late on Tuesday held a small vigil outside the prison for Kahar.
Kahar, who came from a poor family and had struggled with drug addiction since he was a teenager, spent more time behind bars than as a free man, Han said.
He was released from prison in 2005 after a decade of preventive detention. In 2013, Kahar was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death two years later.
Kahar’s incarcerations without proper rehabilitation had made it difficult for him to walk new paths, Han said.
Han, along with the UN and other rights groups, have expressed concerns that executions might be accelerated in Singapore after a two-year halt.
Transformative Justice Collective, a group working for the reform of Singapore’s criminal justice system, said the families of seven other death row prisoners have recently received execution notices. Their cases were postponed due to legal appeals.
A Malaysian man with a mental disability could be next in line after he lost a final appeal on Tuesday against his death sentence.
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam has been on death row since 2010 for trying to smuggle less than 43g of heroin into Singapore.
At an earlier court hearing, his IQ was revealed to be 69 — a level internationally recognized as an intellectual disability, but the court ruled that Nagaenthran knew what he was doing by breaching Singapore’s anti-drug laws.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS