Singapore hangs third drug trafficker in a week

Southeast Asian city-state is among a fistful of countries that enforce the decease punishment for cause offences.

Singapore has carried retired its 3rd hanging of a convicted cause trafficker successful a week contempt appeals for clemency from the United Nations.

Rosman Abdullah, 55, was executed for trafficking 57.43 grams of heroin into the Southeast Asian city-state, Singapore’s cause enforcement bureau said connected Friday.

Rosman, a Singaporean, was “accorded afloat owed process nether the law, and was represented by ineligible counsel passim the process,” the Central Narcotics Bureau said successful a statement.

“Capital punishment is imposed lone for the astir superior crimes, specified arsenic the trafficking of important quantities of drugs which origin precise superior harm, not conscionable to idiosyncratic cause abusers, but besides to their families and the wider society,” the CNB added.

UN experts had called connected Singaporean authorities to spare Rosman, arguing that the decease punishment does small to deter transgression and that authorities had not made due accommodations for his intelligence disabilities.

“We are gravely acrophobic that Mr. Rosman bin Abdullah does not look to person had entree to procedural accommodations, including individualised assistance, for his disablement during his interrogation oregon trial,” the experts said successful a connection released by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights connected Wednesday.

Amnesty International had condemned Rosman’s scheduled execution arsenic “chilling” and “extremely alarming”.

Rosman’s hanging astatine Singapore’s Changi Prison comes precisely a week aft the execution of a 39-year-old Malaysian and a 53-year-old Singaporean for cause trafficking.

Despite its estimation arsenic a modern city-state and planetary concern hub, Singapore ranks among lone a fistful of countries, including China and North Korea, that enforce the decease punishment for cause offences.

Under the country’s laws, anyone trafficking much than 500 grams of cannabis oregon 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin faces mandatory superior punishment.

Since resuming executions successful March 2022 pursuing a hiatus owed to the COVID-19 pandemic, Singaporean authorities person carried retired 24 executions, including 8 truthful acold this year.

Singapore’s government, which keeps a choky rein connected nationalist protestation and the media, has defended the decease penalty arsenic a deterrent against cause abuse, citing surveys that amusement astir citizens enactment the law.