Singapore yesterday executed a Malaysian man condemned for a drug offense after a court dismissed a last-minute challenge from his mother and international pleas to spare him.
Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, 34, had been on death row for more than a decade after he was convicted of trafficking about 43g of heroin into Singapore.
The city-state’s government has said its use of the death penalty for drug crimes is made clear at its borders.
Photo: AFP
Dharmalingam’s family and rights advocates confirmed the execution.
“On this score, may I declare that Malaysia is far more humane,” Dharmalingam’s sister, Sarmila Dharmalingam, said. “Zero to Singapore on this.”
Nagaenthran Dharmalingam’ supporters and lawyers said he had an IQ of 69 and was intellectually disabled, and that the execution of a mentally ill person was prohibited under international human rights law.
Singapore’s courts ruled, citing the testimony of psychiatrists in court, that he was not mentally disabled and had understood his actions at the time he committed the crime.
“Nagaenthran Dharmalingam’s name will go down in history as the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice,” said Maya Foa, director of non-governmental organization Reprieve.
“Hanging an intellectually disabled, mentally unwell man because he was coerced into carrying less than three tablespoons of diamorphine is unjustifiable and a flagrant violation of international laws that Singapore has chosen to sign up to,” Foa added.
Nagaenthran Dharmalingam and his mother had filed a motion on Monday arguing that it was unconstitutional to proceed with his death sentence and that he might not have been given a fair trial because the lead justice who presided over his appeals had been the attorney general when Nagaenthran Dharmalingam was convicted in 2010, which the filing alleged could be a conflict of interest.
The court dismissed the motion, describing it as “frivolous.”
His family said that the body would be brought to their hometown in Malaysia’s northern state of Perak, where they have made preparations for his funeral.
Anyone found with more than 15g of heroin faces the death sentence in Singapore, although judges can reduce this to life in prison at their discretion.
Attempts to reduce Nagaenthran Dharmalingam’s sentence or obtain a presidential pardon failed.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
INSTABILITY: If Hezbollah do not respond to Israel’s killing of their leader then it must be assumed that they simply can not, an Middle Eastern analyst said Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leaves the group under huge pressure to deliver a resounding response to silence suspicions that the once seemingly invincible movement is a spent force, analysts said. Widely seen as the most powerful man in Lebanon before his death on Friday, Nasrallah was the face of Hezbollah and Israel’s arch-nemesis for more than 30 years. His group had gained an aura of invincibility for its part in forcing Israel to withdraw troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, waging a devastating 33-day-long war in 2006 against Israel and opening a “support front” in solidarity with Gaza since
RSS