Arrested for drug trafficking when he was 21, Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, who was said to have an IQ of 69 as well as intellectual disabilities, was sentenced to death for importing 42.72g of heroin into Singapore. He had been on death row for nearly 12 years and was put to death on Wednesday (Apr 27).
At his trial, he claimed he had been coerced by a man who assaulted him and threatened to kill his girlfriend. Appeal after appeal for a commutation of his death sentence failed, with an eleventh-hour motion by his own mother struck down on the eve of his execution.
Nagaenthran, born on Sept 13, 1988, was 34 when he died. His case, due to his intellectual capacity, garnered many international headlines, the United Nations Human Rights Office, the Prime Minister and King of Malaysia, as well as other international and local activists.
His execution last Wednesday was covered by the international press, including the BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, Al-Jazeera, and others.
Yahoo!News spoke to Nagaenthran’s family, and quoted his sister Sarmila Dharmalingam as saying, “The public prosecutor did not ask about the content of the appeal. They only focused on asking who is assisting us in making this kind of appeal. They didn’t bother asking about the content in the affidavit.”
She also told the press, “We are not satisfied with this matter.”
The deceased’s mother, Panchalai Supermaniam had filed a criminal motion to challenge the legality of previous judgments, based on the grounds of conflict of interest, as Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, who been the serving attorney-general who had prosecuted Nagaenthran and secured his conviction, had also dismissed his appeals.
Appearing before the court without a lawyer, Mdm Panchalai explained that their family had filed the motion in order to buy time to obtain a lawyer for Nagaenthran.
The Court of Appeal deemed the application to be “devoid of merit”.
Two government agencies, in Singapore, have defended Nagaenthran’s execution.
On Wednesday night, the Central Narcotics Bureau issued a statement saying that his actions had been borne of “a deliberate, purposeful and calculated decision.”
“Nagaenthran considered the risks, balanced it against the reward he had hoped he would get, and decided to take the risk,” the statement said, noting that “much misinformation that has been put out in relation to Nagaenthran, in particular on his mental state.”
CNB’s statement may be read in full here.
In a separate statement, the Attorney General’s Chambers underlined that the deceased had been given a fair trial and that it had “exhausted his rights of appeal and almost every other recourse under the law over some 11 years”.
Netizens commenting on a Yahoo!News report about Nagaenthran’s execution also appeared to support the death penalty for drug convictions.
/TISG