Nguyen Van Tuong Bị Treo Cỗ Trong Tù Singapore

Singapore Hangs Australian Drug Smuggler Nguyen

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore executed Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van today after rejecting requests from Australian Prime Minister John Howard to spare his life.

The 25-year-old was hanged at Changi Prison this morning, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News. Church bells rang out in Nguyen's home town of Melbourne at 9 a.m., when he was scheduled to be executed.

Nguyen is the first Australian to be executed in 12 years, after being caught at Changi Airport with 396 grams (14 ounces) of pure heroin in 2002. He claims he was working for a Sydney drug syndicate to help his twin brother Khoa, a former addict, pay A$30,000 ($22,000) in debts.

``We absolutely condemn this execution,'' said Tim Goodwin, coordinator of Amnesty International's Asia Pacific Anti-Death Penalty Network. ``He committed an extremely serious crime and he should have been punished severely. But the fact is that the death penalty does not deter the drug trade any more effectively than other punishments would.''

Nguyen's execution ignited an uproar in Australia, which abolished capital punishment in 1973. Newspapers criticized Singapore for being authoritarian and consumers called for boycotts of companies including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.'s Optus unit and Singapore Airlines Ltd.

Goodwin said thousands of Australians joined Amnesty International's campaign to save Nguyen's life and today held silent candle-light vigils.

There will probably be a funeral for Nguyen at Melbourne's St. Patrick's Cathedral when his body has been brought back to Australia, Monsignor Les Tomlinson, vicar general of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, said in an interview.

Street Value

``I don't believe in capital punishment and I hope the anti-drugs message that comes from this is stronger, or at least as strong as the capital punishment message,'' Prime Minister Howard told Melbourne radio station 3AW today.

Nguyen failed in requests for clemency to the Court of Appeal and Singapore President S.R. Nathan.

``We take a very serious view of drug trafficking; the penalty is death,'' Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a news conference in Berlin yesterday after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. ``In this case, it was an enormous amount of drugs.''

The heroin had a street value of S$1.3 million ($770,000) and was enough to supply 26,000 doses, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said today.

Last Contact

Khoa arrived at Changi Prison about 45 minutes before his brother's scheduled execution, Australian Associated Press reported. Khoa and his mother Kim were yesterday allowed to hold hands with Nguyen. Family members are usually prohibited from physical contact with condemned prisoners in Singapore.

Howard asked Singapore repeatedly to spare Nguyen's life, and raised the issue in a meeting with the Singapore prime minister in Malta on Nov. 26.

Lee ``was left in no doubt as to the intensity of feeling within Australia,'' Howard said, according to a transcript of the press conference in Malta posted on his Web site.

Appeals for clemency were also made by Australian opposition leader Kim Beazley, Governor-General Michael Jeffery, the British Queen's representative in Australia and Pope Benedict XVI.

``Singapore recognized that many Australians are disappointed with our decision but Singapore also had to protect the interests and welfare of our citizens,'' the city-state's government said in a Nov. 24 statement. ``The issue here was the right of a sovereign State to apply its own laws to persons who had committed crimes within its jurisdiction.''

Schapelle Corby

Visitors to Singapore are reminded on most flights to the city, and on their arrival at customs, that the country has strict penalties for drug trafficking, and the arrival card notes those punishments include death.

Nguyen is the latest high-profile case of a young Australian facing drug charges in Asia. Model Michelle Leslie, 24, returned to Sydney last week after serving a three-month sentence in Bali for ecstasy possession.

Schapelle Corby, 28, is serving a 15-year jail sentence for smuggling 4.1 kilograms (9 pounds) of marijuana into Bali. Nine other Australians are awaiting trial in Bali on heroin trafficking charges that carry the death penalty.

In Vietnam, two Australians have been sentenced to be executed for heroin trafficking.

Execution Rate

Singapore, a city of 4.3 million people, has the highest rate of execution per capita in the world, according to Amnesty International. It has a mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking, murder, treason and certain firearms offences, and more than 420 people have been executed since 1991, according to Amnesty International's Goodwin.

With the mandatory death sentence for Nguyen, none of the specific issues in Nguyen's case such as ``his youth, questions about his remorse and his early confession and cooperation with the police were able to be considered by a court,'' Goodwin said in a televised interview today.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng said in an e-mailed statement on Nov. 21 that the city-state plans to continue executing criminals sentenced to death by hanging after studying other methods of execution. Hanging is the execution style specified by law, he said, in response to a question in parliament as to whether lethal injections would be considered.



To contact the reporters on this story:
Linus Chua in Singapore at [email protected];
Miriam Steffens in Sydney at [email protected].

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