Thangaraju Suppia, 46, was hanged in Singapore after being convicted in 2018 of selling 2.2 pounds of marijuana.despite last-minute pleas for clemency from his family and activists.
Authorities say the judge found that he used the phone number to contact dealers trying to smuggle drugs into Singapore.
However, Thangaraju’s family and activists alleged that the 46-year-old was not given proper legal advice. and that he was denied access to an interpreter while he was being questioned by the police.
Human rights organizations have called “scandalous and unacceptable” this Wednesday’s execution in Singapore of a man convicted of trying to sell 1 kilogram of marijuana.
Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Asia Associate Director, called the execution “shocking and unacceptable.” and expressed concern about what he calls “a renewed wave of death row emptying” in Singapore.
“Singapore’s continued use of the death penalty for drug possession is an affront to human rights that makes much of the world recoil and wonder if the image of a modern, civilized Singapore is just a mirage,” Robertson said.
For his part, Amnesty International (AI) Deputy Regional Director Min Yoo Ha said in a statement that “this execution once again shows the complete failure of Singapore’s stubborn acceptance of the death penalty“.
The Thangaraju case has received attention not only because it is an attempted offense against the sale of marijuana, which is being legalized for medical purposes in a growing number of countries, including Thailand, but also because of the alleged irregularities in this process, to which it relatives and NGOs.
Thangaraju and his lawyers allege that he has never seen or touched drugs and that third parties accused him of certain telephone conversations that were not presented at his trial, during which he was sentenced to death for “complicity in a conspiracy with target traffic” marijuana from Malaysia to Singapore in 2013.
Singapore has one of the toughest drug laws in the world and provides for the death penalty for at least 500 grams of marijuana.
In 2022, after two years without hangings due to the COVID pandemic, he executed 11 traffickers, including an intellectually disabled prisoner, despite criticism from the UN.
Source: La Opinion
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