A heroin courier has become the first convicted drug trafficker in Singapore to avoid a death sentence following reforms in the application of capital punishment, officials said Thursday.
A warning sign at a bus stop reads, "Take drugs and you could spend 12 months in a cell this size with 2 other people", in Singapore, January 20, 2006. A heroin courier has become the first convicted drug trafficker in Singapore to avoid a death sentence following reforms in the application of capital punishment, officials said Thursday.
Singaporean Abdul Haleem Abdul Karim, 30, was saved from the gallows because he was a mere courier and assisted the police in disrupting the activities of drug traffickers, the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) said.
Abdul Haleem was sentenced on Wednesday to life in prison as well as 24 strokes of the cane, an additional punishment imposed for serious offences.
Until the legal reforms took effect this year, Singapore judges had no choice but to impose death by hanging on drug traffickers.
For heroin dealers, anyone found trafficking in more than 15 grams (half an ounce) faced the mandatory death penalty under the old system.
Abdul Haleem and a friend were found in possession of at least 72.5 grams of the drug when they were arrested in 2010, prosecutors said.
The mandatory death penalty had long been denounced by human rights groups which say most traffickers caught and executed are just low-level couriers.
The AGC said in a statement that Abdul Haleem satisfied two requirements for a judge to spare him from execution: he was just a courier and he provided "substantive assistance" to police in the fight against the drugs trade.
But his friend Muhammad Ridzuan Muhammad Ali, 28, was sentenced to be hanged because he did not meet the criteria, said the AGC.
Under the legal reforms, judges are given the discretion to impose a jail term rather than the death penalty if a convict meets certain requirements which must be certified by the AGC.
The sentencing of the pair on Wednesday set off a courtroom drama when Abdul Haleem demanded to be hanged along with his friend, also a Singaporean citizen, the Straits Times newspaper reported.
"If you are sparing my life and not sparing his life, I'd rather go down with him," Abdul Haleem was quoted as telling Justice Tay Yong Kwang.
The legal reforms were passed following a year-long review of the mandatory death penalties for murder and drug trafficking.
But Singapore, one of the world's safest societies, rejected calls to abolish the death penalty altogether, saying it must be preserved as a deterrent to crime.
Human rights groups on Thursday welcomed the news on Abdul Haleem but said the law could have been more specific about the extent of cooperation needed from a drugs suspect.
"It is a bit unclear and it leaves too much discretion on what exactly cooperating means and what the threshold is for the amount of cooperation," Roseann Rife, head of Amnesty International in East Asia, told AFP.
Sinapan Samydorai, executive director of Singapore civil rights group Think Centre, said "there is still that question on the discretion given to the prosecution to decide who is cooperative".
Kirsten Han, co-founder of Singapore-based anti-death penalty lobby group We Believe in Second Chances, echoed the same sentiment.
"When the power to issue such certificates lies in the hands of the Attorney-General, judges are still restricted in exercising their discretion, as the Attorney-General can effectively decide who can or cannot escape the death penalty," she told AFP.