Singapore announced Wednesday that a prisoner with intellectual disabilities accused of drug trafficking will be executed on April 27, despite criticism from the international community and calls for the suspension of the sentence.
Nagaenthran's sister (Nagen) Dharmalingam received a call from the island prison service on Wednesday announcing that the man, a Malaysian national, will be executed within a week, according to Kirsten Han, coordinator of the local NGO Transformative Justice Collective, posts on social networks.
On March 29, a court rejected the last appeal to stop the execution of Nagen, whom his lawyers asked to exonerate for suffering from a diagnosed intellectual disability.
Since then, the prisoner had only the last chance of receiving a presidential pardon, which has not happened so far.
Nagaenthran, 34, was arrested in April 2009 and charged with drug trafficking when he tried to cross the border from Malaysia with about 42.7 grams of heroin, when Singapore's drug trafficking law, one of the most draconian on the planet, establishes the death penalty from 15 grams of smuggling.
In their appeal to the conviction, Nagaenthran's lawyers had submitted medical evaluations confirming the defendant's intellectual deficiency, which brought international attention to his case, criticized by the UN and the European Union.
The Singapore Court of Appeal held in rejecting the appeal that the law is “unequivocal” with regard to the application of the death penalty, except for very specific circumstances, and urged lawyers to “seek legislative change” as a way to avoid execution, which the country applies by hanging.
Nagaenthran is not the only prisoner who could imminently go to the gallows, where oenegés like Han's warn that the capacity on death row is almost full and that could speed up the hangings.
On 30 March, Singapore hanged 68-year-old Singaporean Abdul Kahar bin Othman, also convicted of drug trafficking, in which he marked the first execution in two years.
According to Han's NGO, which is fighting to eradicate the death penalty in the prosperous country, there are more than fifty men on death row, the highest number on record.
(With information from EFE)
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