Singapore hangs man over 1 Kg of Cannabis. Singapore hanged a prisoner convicted of conspiracy to smuggle one kilogramme of cannabis on Wednesday, according to authorities, defying international calls for the city-state to abolish capital punishment.
Despite a request from the United Nations Human Rights Office for Singapore to “urgently reconsider” the execution and demands from British businessman Richard Branson to postpone it, the execution went forward.
“Singaporean Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, had his capital sentence carried out today at Changi Prison Complex,” a Singapore Prisons Service spokesman told AFP.
Tangaraju was found guilty in 2017 of “abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic” 1,017.9 grammes (35.9 ounces) of cannabis, which was more than twice the minimum amount necessary for a death sentence in Singapore.
Singapore hangs man over 1 Kg of Cannabis. In 2018, he was sentenced to death, and the Court of Appeal upheld the conviction.
Tangaraju was “not anywhere near” the narcotics at the time of his arrest, according to Branson, a member of the Geneva-based Global Commission on Drug Policy, who wrote Monday on his blog that Singapore may be poised to execute an innocent man.
Tangaraju’s guilt had been confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt, according to Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry on Tuesday.
The government stated that two mobile phone numbers belonging to him were used to organise the delivery of the medications.
Cannabis has been decriminalised in several areas of the world, including adjacent Thailand, with authorities abandoning prison sentences, and rights groups have piled pressure on Singapore to eliminate the capital penalty.
The Asian financial centre boasts some of the strictest anti-narcotics legislation in the world and says the death sentence is still an effective deterrent to drug trafficking.
However, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights disagrees.
“The death penalty is still used in a small number of countries, largely due to the myth that it deters crime,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement Tuesday.
Tangaraju’s family requested clemency while simultaneously requesting a retrial.
The execution on Wednesday was the city-state’s first in six months and the 12th since last year.
After a more than two-year break, Singapore resumed executions in March 2022.
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam was among those hanged, and his execution drew a global uproar, notably from the United Nations and Branson, because he was believed to have a mental handicap.
According to the UN, the death penalty has not been shown to be an effective deterrent globally and is incompatible with international human rights legislation, which allows capital punishment only for the most serious crimes.
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