Human rights groups are pleading for the life of an intellectually disabled man who is to be hanged in Singapore next week for serving as a drug mule after being threatened by traffickers.
Barring a last-minute commutation, Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a 33-year-old Malaysian, will be executed on Wednesday, despite repeated legal appeals and petitions calling for clemency. Members of his family are struggling to meet the bureaucratic and quarantine requirements imposed by the coronavirus pandemic to see him before he is killed.
The British human rights organisation Reprieve, said in a report: “His execution would amount to a grave miscarriage of justice because he was sentenced to death despite strong evidence that he was threatened and coerced by traffickers who took advantage of Naga’s intellectual disability and severe poverty.
“Despite the evidence of mental impairment detailed in five psychiatric and psychological reports, the courts did not apply Singapore’s own laws which provide for a life sentence instead of the death penalty for those found to have couriered drugs who are suffering from a mental impairment.”
Read the full story in The Times.