A Malaysian man convicted of drug trafficking was killed Wednesday in Singapore despite pleading for mercy on the grounds that he was mentally disabled, his family said.
NagaenthranDharmalingam, 34, had been on death row for more than a decade for smuggling 44 grams of heroin into Singapore, with the world’s strongest drug laws. His lawyers have filed numerous appeals against his assassination claiming he is mentally disabled.His brother Navin Kumar, 22, said by telephone the murder had been done and that the body would be returned to Malaysia for burial in the city of Ipoh.
A Singapore court on Tuesday dismissed a challenge posed by Dharmalingam’s mother, paving the way for him to be hanged.
At the end of Tuesday’s trial, Dharmalingam and his family entered a glass space to hold hands and hold their hands as they cried. Her cries of “ma” were heard in court.About 300 people held a candlelight vigil in Singapore’s park on Monday in protest of the planned hanging.
Dharmalingam’s case has caught the world’s attention, as a team of UN experts and British billionaire Richard Branson joined the Malaysian prime minister and human rights activists in urging Singapore to reverse his death sentence.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. However, the courts ruled that he knew what he was doing at the time of the crime, and it ruled that there was no convincing evidence of a decrease in his condition.
The Singapore government says the death penalty prohibits drug trafficking and most of its citizens support the death penalty.
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