Iced Tea
12-02-05, 3:45 AM
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 US) 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.
bloomberg.com (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=an9ijUfXdevY&refer=asia)
The people coming into Singapore are told they could be hanged if they bring drugs into the country yet idiots still do it. You want to help your brother, tell him not to do drugs and get a job to pay the drug debt.
Singapore is taking a strong approach against drugs and while many other countries may not like it, Singapore's zero tolerance approach is in response to being next door to one of the biggest drug growing and exporting nations in the world. But what do people expect from a country that still canes people.
While his supporters call for his clemancy, Nguyen was hardly a small time smuggler, street value of S$1.3 million ($770,000 US) and enough for 26,000 doses is hardly a small time crime. While I feel for him for doing this to save his brother, there were better ways to raise the money.
While I regret Nguyen's death I don't think I would feel so bad when major drug traffickers were hung. Is it better that they sit in prison for a few years, and then go right back to trafficking or should they just be killed off?
Personally, I would never set foot in Singapore with anything other than cold medication and a good map to the Canadian embassy but that's just me.
One more thing, Nguyen Tuong Van dies for something he did to save his brother but why wasn't the brother helping smuggle the drugs? The brother, Khoa, should have asked to take his brother's place because it was his fault Nguyen had to smuggle the drugs. I don't think Singapore would have minded as long as they hung somebody.
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 US) 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.
bloomberg.com (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=an9ijUfXdevY&refer=asia)
The people coming into Singapore are told they could be hanged if they bring drugs into the country yet idiots still do it. You want to help your brother, tell him not to do drugs and get a job to pay the drug debt.
Singapore is taking a strong approach against drugs and while many other countries may not like it, Singapore's zero tolerance approach is in response to being next door to one of the biggest drug growing and exporting nations in the world. But what do people expect from a country that still canes people.
While his supporters call for his clemancy, Nguyen was hardly a small time smuggler, street value of S$1.3 million ($770,000 US) and enough for 26,000 doses is hardly a small time crime. While I feel for him for doing this to save his brother, there were better ways to raise the money.
While I regret Nguyen's death I don't think I would feel so bad when major drug traffickers were hung. Is it better that they sit in prison for a few years, and then go right back to trafficking or should they just be killed off?
Personally, I would never set foot in Singapore with anything other than cold medication and a good map to the Canadian embassy but that's just me.
One more thing, Nguyen Tuong Van dies for something he did to save his brother but why wasn't the brother helping smuggle the drugs? The brother, Khoa, should have asked to take his brother's place because it was his fault Nguyen had to smuggle the drugs. I don't think Singapore would have minded as long as they hung somebody.