Singapore executed by hanging on Wednesday (April 26th) a man sentenced to death for trafficking one kilogram of cannabis, authorities said, ignoring calls from abroad to reconsider the execution and abolish the death penalty in the city-state. .
“Singaporean Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, had his sentence carried out today at Changi prison
,” a spokesman for the Singapore prison service told AFP.
Tangaraju Suppiah was executed despite an appeal the day before by the United Nations Human Rights Office to the Singaporean authorities to
“urgently reconsider”
the planned hanging of the condemned man.
British billionaire Richard Branson, a member of the Global Commission on Drug Control, also urged the city-state on Monday to drop the execution of Tangaraju Suppiah, saying, like human rights defenders and members of the family of Tangaraju Suppiah, that the latter never handled the cannabis for which he was convicted and denounce flaws in the file.
But Singapore's Home Ministry on Tuesday refuted Branson's claims, accusing him in a statement of having
“Disrespectful to Singapore judges and our criminal justice system”
.
Tangaraju Suppiah was sentenced to death in 2018 for his part in trafficking 1.01 kilograms of cannabis, double the amount punishable by death in Singapore, one of the most repressive countries in the world on narcotics.
