Singapore hangs prisoner over 1 kg of cannabis
Singapore on Wednesday hanged a prisoner convicted of conspiracy to smuggle one kilogramme of cannabis, authorities said, ignoring international calls for the city-state to abolish capital punishment. The execution took place despite a plea by the United Nations Human Rights Office for Singapore to "urgently reconsider" the hanging and calls by British tycoon Richard Branson to halt it. "Singaporean Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, had his capital sentence carried out today at Changi Prison Complex," a spokesman for the Singapore Prisons Service said. Tangaraju was convicted in 2017 of "abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic" 1,017.9 grams of cannabis, twice the minimum volume required for a death sentence in Singapore. He was sentenced to death in 2018 and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision. Branson, a member of the Geneva-based Global Commission on Drug Policy, wrote on Monday on his blog that Tangaraju was "not anywhere near" the drugs at the time of his arrest and that Singapore may be about to put an innocent man to death. Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry responded on Tuesday that Tangaraju's guilt had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The ministry said two mobile phone numbers that prosecutors said belonged to him had been used to coordinate the delivery of the drugs. In many parts of the world – including neighbouring Thailand – cannabis has been decriminalised, with authorities abandoning prison sentences, and rights groups have been heaping pressure on Singapore to abolish capital punishment. Singapore has some of the world's toughest anti-narcotics laws and insists the death penalty remains an effective deterrent against trafficking. But the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights disagrees. "The death penalty is still being used in a small number of countries, largely because of the myth that it deters crime," the OHCHR said in a statement on Tuesday. (AFP)