A mentally challenged Malaysian man is set to be hanged in Singapore next week after a final appeal was turned down, his sister said on Wednesday April 20, despite international mobilization to support him.
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Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam’s family have been informed that he will be executed next Wednesday, his sister Sarmila Dharmalingam told AFP. Members of his family, including his mother and three siblings, will travel to the city-state to visit him ahead of the execution, she said.
Nagaenthran was arrested in 2009 at the age of 21 in possession of a small amount of drugs and sentenced to death a year later. Petitions for clemency have multiplied, from the European Union to British billionaire Richard Branson. The long legal battle finally ended last month in the dismissal of a final appeal when judges dismissed the defense’s argument that the execution of a man with intellectual disabilities violated international law.
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“dishonour”
Mr Ravi, a human rights lawyer working on the case, said the news of Nagaenthran’s impending execution was “heartbreaking”. “The Singaporean state can never recover from the international shame it will suffer by hanging a mentally challenged person,” he wrote in a social media post.
In March, Singapore carried out its first execution since 2019 with the hanging of a drug trafficker, raising fears of more executions to come in the coming months. In addition to Nagaenthran, the latest appeals of three other men convicted of drug trafficking were rejected. Nagaenthran was arrested in 2009 at the age of 21 with 43 grams of heroin on his thigh while entering Singapore, which has some of the toughest drug laws in the world. His supporters say he has a handicapped IQ of 69 and was forced into the crime. Singapore retains the death penalty for several crimes, including drug trafficking and murder, and says this has helped it remain one of the safest places in Asia.