Singapore executes a mentally challenged man

According to his relatives, a mentally challenged Malaysian man was killed in Singapore on Wednesday after losing a protracted legal struggle and despite international condemnation and clemency petitions.

Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam was caught in 2009 for smuggling a minor amount of heroin into the city-state, which has some of the strictest drug prohibitions in the world, and was sentenced to death the next year.

Due to worries about his intellectual disability, the decision to hang him drew global condemnation, with the UN, the European Union, and British entrepreneur Richard Branson among those who spoke out against it.

Nagaenthran filed legal challenges for more than a decade, but all were denied by Singapore’s courts, and the city-president state’s refused clemency requests.

His sister, Sarmila Dharmalingam, told AFP that the 34-year-old was killed in the early hours of the morning.

“It’s amazing that Singapore carried out the execution despite international calls for him to be spared,” she remarked from Malaysia.

She went on to say that the family was “very upset” and “shocked.”

Nagaenthran was “the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice,” according to Reprieve, an anti-death penalty NGO.

“Hanging an intellectually challenged, mentally ill guy… is unacceptable and a clear breach of international rules that Singapore has decided to sign up to,” said Maya Foa, the organization’s director.

– ‘Inhumane’ –

Nagaenthran was supposed to be hung in November, but his execution was postponed while he filed an appeal claiming that hanging someone with mental problems is against international law.

He was apprehended at the age of 21 while attempting to enter Singapore with a bundle of heroin weighing around 43 grammes (one and a half ounces) — almost three teaspoons.

Supporters claim he has an IQ of 69, which is considered a handicap, and that he was forced to perform the murder.

Authorities, on the other hand, have supported his conviction, claiming that legal judgements determined that he understood what he was doing at the time of the crime.

His mother filed a last-ditch legal challenge on Tuesday, but it was quickly dismissed by a judge, causing his family to cry in court.

Branson encouraged Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob to award Nagaenthran mercy in an interview with AFP on Tuesday, calling the death penalty “inhumane.”

After a two-year break, Singapore resumed executions this month with the death of another drug trafficker.

Activists now worry that authorities are planning a wave of executions after many other death-row inmates recently had their appeals denied.

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