03 August 2023 :

Singapore executed a 39-year-old man who was convicted of trafficking heroin, the city state’s fifth hanging this year and the third in just over a week, authorities said on August 3, 2023.
Mohamed Shalleh Adul Latiff was sentenced to death for possessing around 55gm of heroin “for the purpose of trafficking” in 2019.
His punishment was carried out on August 3, the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) said in a statement.
According to court documents, Mohamed Shalleh worked as a delivery driver before his arrest in 2016. During his trial, he claimed to have believed he was delivering contraband cigarettes for a friend to whom he owed money.
He became the 16th prisoner sent to the gallows since the government resumed executions in March 2022 after a two-year pause during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The execution comes less than a week after Singapore executed the first woman in nearly 20 years for drug trafficking despite condemnation from rights groups.
Saridewi Binte Djamani, a 45-year-old Singaporean, was executed on July 28 for trafficking around 30gm of heroin.
A local man, Mohd Aziz bin Hussain, 57, had been hanged two days earlier for trafficking about 50gm of heroin.
The United Nations last week denounced the hangings and called for Singapore to impose a moratorium on the death penalty.
Despite growing international pressure on the issue, Singapore insists that the death penalty is an effective deterrent against drug trafficking.

28 July 2023 :

Singapore conducted its first execution of a woman in 19 years on July 28, 2023 and its second hanging this week for drug trafficking despite calls for the city-state to cease capital punishment for drug-related crimes.
Saridewi Djamani, 45, was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking about 31 grams (1 ounce) of diamorphine, or pure heroin, the Central Narcotics Bureau said. It said the amount was “sufficient to feed the addiction of about 370 abusers for a week.”
Anti-death penalty activists said the last woman known to have been hanged in Singapore was 36-year-old hairdresser Yen May Woen, also for drug trafficking, in 2004.
Djamani’s execution came two days after that of a Singaporean man, Mohammed Aziz Hussain, 56, for trafficking around 50 grams of heroin.
Human rights groups say Singapore has executed 15 people for drug offenses since it resumed hangings in March 2022, an average of one a month.

26 July 2023 :

Mohd Aziz bin Hussain, a 56-years-old Singaporean Malay man, was hanged on July 26, 2023 at dawn at Changi Prison in Singapore. He had been convicted for trafficking about 50 grams of heroin and sentenced to death under the Misuse of Drugs Act, a 1973 law imposing the mandatory death penalty for trafficking of very low thresholds of narcotics. Aziz had argued that he had been intimidated by the investigating officer during his interrogation without a laywer, and he had been tricked into making certain admissions with the false promise of a reduced non-capital charge.
Saridewi binte Djamani, a 45-years-old mother, will follow the same destiny the day after tomorrow. Her execution is scheduled at midnight CET on Friday 28 July, and could only be avoided with the clemency of the President of Singapore, who has not granted any since the past thirty years. Saridewi is a former drug addict, she was sentenced to death for trafficking about 30 grams of heroin. She claimed her statements to the police were not accurate because she had been suffering from drug withdrawal at the time of her arrest and she could not think clearly, but these circumstances were not deemed relevant by the Court.
This is the first hanging of a woman in Singapore since nearly twenty years. The country has already executed 11 small drug traffickers in 2022, and three this year. Nevertheless, this ongoing zero-tolerance policy has not led to the arrest of the kingpins in the last half-century, as admitted by the Minister of Law and Home Affairs Shanmugam Kasiviswanathan himself.

17 May 2023 :

Singapore on May 17, 2023 hanged a man for trafficking drugs, authorities said, in the city state’s second execution in three weeks.
The man was convicted in 2019 of trafficking around 1.5kg (3.3 pounds) of cannabis, said Kokila Annamalai of local rights group Transformative Justice Collective.
Singapore has some of the world’s toughest anti-narcotics laws: trafficking more than 500 grams of cannabis can result in the death penalty.
“A 36-year-old Singaporean man had his capital sentence carried out today at Changi Prison Complex,” a spokesman for the city state’s prison service said.
Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) said in a separate statement that it would not release the name of the man to respect his family’s wish for privacy.
“The person was accorded full due process under the law, and had access to legal counsel throughout the process,” CNB added.
A last-ditch appeal to review the case and stay his execution was dismissed on May 16, Annamalai said.
Despite growing international calls to abolish the death penalty, Singapore insists that it is an effective deterrent against trafficking.
The May 17 execution was the second in Singapore this year after Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, was hanged on April 26 for conspiracy to smuggle 1kg of cannabis.
Thirteen death row inmates have been hanged since Singapore resumed executions in March 2022 after a hiatus of more than two years.
Tangaraju Suppiah’s execution sparked an international outcry, with rights groups pointing to “many flaws” in the case, but the Singapore government said his guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Activists said they will continue to push for Singapore to abolish capital punishment as it has no proven deterrent effect on crime.
“The call to the Singapore government [to scrap the death penalty] has been loud and clear globally, and we will repeat the call: Singapore has to halt the executions,” Amnesty International’s executive director for Malaysia Katrina Jorene Maliamauv told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on May 16.
“They have to commute all existing death sentences.”
Among those hanged last year was Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, whose execution sparked international condemnation because he was deemed to have a mental disability.
Apart from Singapore, Amnesty International said Indonesia carried out 112 drug-related executions last year by firing squad after a hiatus since 2016. In contrast, neighbouring Thailand has decriminalised cannabis while Malaysia has ended the mandatory death penalty for serious crimes.

26 April 2023 :

Singapore on April 26, 2023 hanged 46-year-old Indian-origin Tangaraju Suppiah who was found guilty in 2018 of trafficking more than 1kg (2.2 pounds) of cannabis, despite last-minute appeals for clemency from his family and activists.
His family said they had been given Tangaraju’s death certificate, anti-death penalty campaigner Kirsten Han wrote on Twitter.
A spokesperson for the country’s prison service told the AFP news agency that the sentence had been carried out at Changi prison in the island’s east.
Tangaraju Suppiah was sentenced to death in 2018 for abetting the attempted trafficking of just more than 1kg of cannabis. A judge found he was using a phone number that was communicating with traffickers attempting to smuggle the drugs into Singapore.
Tangaraju’s family and activists had argued the 46-year-old was not provided with adequate legal counsel and that he was denied access to a Tamil interpreter while being questioned by the police.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson deplored the execution and said the evidence against Tangaraju was “far from clear cut – since he never actually touched the marijuana in question, was questioned by police without a lawyer, and denied access to a Tamil interpreter when he asked for one”.
Amnesty International described the execution as “unlawful” and said that proceedings “violated international law and standards”.
The execution was the first in Singapore in six months after it carried out 11 death sentences last year.
An increasing number of Singaporeans have expressed concern about the use of the mandatory death penalty in drug cases with last year’s hanging of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam prompting rare protests in the tightly-controlled city-state.
Singapore argues its tough stance is a deterrent to drug trafficking.
Responding to an appeal by British business tycoon Richard Branson on behalf of Tangaraju, the government said the case against him had been proved beyond all reasonable doubt and that the kilogram of cannabis would have been “sufficient to feed the addiction of about 150 abusers for a week”. It reiterated the need for its hardline policies.
“Our approach has worked for us, and we will continue charting our own path according to what is in the best interests of Singaporeans,” the Ministry of Home Affairs said in its statement.
But Dobby Chew, the executive coordinator of the Anti Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN), said recent executions had raised significant concerns.
Nagaenthran was executed although his IQ suggested an intellectual disability, he noted, while Kalwant Singh was hanged in July last year after cooperating with authorities and Tangaraju’s alleged co-conspirators who were caught with the drugs were jailed or given a discharge.
“None of these people are persons of significance in the grand scheme of drug trafficking operations in Singapore and yet, they are killed under the guise that it was necessary to protect Singapore,” Chew told Al Jazeera.
The United Nations says countries that retain the death penalty should use it only for the most serious crimes, which does not include drug offences. On April 25, it urged Singapore to halt Tangaraju’s execution.
“Singapore’s continued use of the death penalty for drug possession is a human rights outrage that makes much of the world recoil and wonder whether the image of modern, civilised Singapore is just a mirage,” HRW’s Robertson said.
Neighbouring Malaysia recently passed legal reforms to remove the mandatory death sentence for offences including drugs and give judges the discretion to decide on sentencing.
It currently has a moratorium on executions.

30 April 2023 :

The Singapore Court of Appeal changed the death sentence of a heroin dealer to 10 years in prison on April 26, 2023, the same day that Singaporean Indian man Tangaraju Suppiah was executed for allegedly abetting in the trafficking of 1kg of marijuana (cannabis), a parcel that he had not even touched.
Death row convict Abdoll Mutaleb Raffik, who had trafficked heroin, one of the most addictive substances in the world, will now escape execution as the Singapore Court of Appeal changed his punishment to 10 years’ imprisonment. The new verdict came on April 26, shortly after Tangaraju Suppiah, a man of Tamil ethnicity, was hanged at Changi prison despite an international outcry and fervent mercy appeals by his family.
The dealer had his death sentence commuted on the amended charge for attempted possession of more than 5.5kg of a “granular and powdery substance” that contained not less than 212.57g of pure heroin. Under Singapore law, importing more than 15g of pure heroin gets one the death penalty.
Raffik was one of the three people convicted by the Singapore High Court in 2019 for engaging in a conspiracy to import bundles of heroin into Singapore. He was sentenced to death as the main dealer. His co-accused, Mohd Zaini Zainutdin and Mohd Noor Ismail, were each sentenced to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane, as the court found them to be couriers only and because they had helped the Central Narcotics Bureau with investigations.
The Court of Appeal on April 26 decided that there was insufficient evidence to prove the capital charge against Raffik beyond reasonable doubt.