Posted on 12/02/2005 3:55:18 PM PST by naturalman1975
HEROIN smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van sent a message to young Australians to stay away from drugs before he paid the ultimate price for his crime yesterday.
Nguyen was hanged at dawn in Singapore's Changi Prison as family and friends wept nearby, bells tolled at prayer services across Australia and an international storm gathered over capital punishment.
In a hand-written letter to be read at his funeral in Melbourne on Wednesday, it is believed Nguyen repents for the pain he has caused, and warns about the evil of drugs.
Father Peter Hansen, who will lead a requiem mass for Nguyen at St Patrick's Cathedral, said he believed Nguyen wrote a statement to be read to the congregation.
Lawyer Julian McMahon said Nguyen, 25, also wrote to several prominent people and a political leader in his final days.
Asked if he penned warnings against drug use, Mr McMahon said: "I'd have no doubt there would be such a letter. That would be in keeping with the sorts of letters he's been writing."
A courageous Nguyen prayed in the last minutes of his life and embraced a Singapore prison official as he was led to the gallows.
But there was little dignity when his body, wrapped in a white sheet, was picked up by a local undertaker then carried on a stretcher to a funeral parlour in full public view.
Nguyen's family claimed his body within hours and will fly it home tonight for the funeral service in Melbourne he helped plan.
His twin brother, Khoa, and several of his friends were as close as possible when he died, gathering in a nearby jail building as a hangman slipped a noose over the condemned man's head.
Nguyen's mother Kim, who was able to touch her son's face and hair during her last visit on Thursday, grieved with friends and relatives at a nearby chapel as the hour of execution passed.
Inside, on death row, Nguyen was joined in prayer in the last minutes of his life by a nun and a pastoral worker.
"I know that he died the courageous death that he planned for himself and died as an optimistic young man, making us all extremely proud of him," lawyer Lex Lasry said.
"I gather he embraced the superintendent as he walked to the point where he was executed and that's exactly the sort of thing I would expect from him."
The hours before the hanging were torture for Mrs Nguyen.
Later, when told how he died, "she was distraught to start with and then some time after six (o'clock) calm started to settle over her", Mr Lasry said.
When Khoa left the prison he embraced a prison official before leaving in a taxi.
Khoa, whose legal debts Nguyen said he had been trying to repay by smuggling heroin, appeared distressed.
"He's in a most tragic situation. But hopefully today for him is the start of ... the rest of his life." Mr Lasry said.
The execution stirred opposition to the death penalty in Singapore, with the newly formed Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Committee lighting candles outside the prison gates.
The candles rested on coloured pages with inscriptions to Nguyen from supporters.
One read: "Dear Van. We're all under the same skies. But some choose to be less human. You may be gone, but we'll continue the fight."
Among the crowd was the mother of the last man hanged in Singapore.
Drug smuggler Shanmugan Murugesu, who was executed in May, had befriended Nguyen and described him to his mother as a "baby among hardened criminals".
Letchumi Murugesu wept yesterday, telling how she had been banned from touching her son, and describing the process as torture.
A little over an hour after Nguyen's execution, Singapore issued a statement confirming his death. It repeated the point that his crime was to smuggle enough heroin to supply 26,000 hits to addicts.
It later emerged that Singapore's veteran chief executioner, Darshan Singh, was not called on to hang Nguyen.
"Only God knows" who had replaced him, Singh said.
Hours after the execution, Mrs Nguyen and Khoa held a private Mass at the Marymount Chapel inside the grounds of Singapore's Good Shepherd Convent, where they have been staying for the past week.
Mr Lasry was optimistic the case might bring about change in Singapore. "There's more feeling than people realise in this country about this sort of thing."
For what its worth he was smuggling heroin out of Singapore.
If Nguyen Tuong Van had only written a couple of children's books, he'd be on appeal with a line of celebs testifying to his "reformation".
But there was little dignity when his body, wrapped in a white sheet, was picked up by a local undertaker then carried on a stretcher to a funeral parlour in full public view.
Nguyen's family claimed his body within hours and will fly it home tonight for the funeral service in Melbourne he helped plan.
He's lucky this is Singapore that his family could reclaim his body after the execution. When Hong Kong still had capital punishment in the 1960s, even the relatives of the hanged wouldn't be able to reclaim the body. All of the executed were buried in a special cemetery within the prison grounds, and only marked with the criminal's number. Even decades later, relatives even allowed to go in and visit the graves.
For what it's really worth, he was smuggling drugs from a third country to Australia, via Singapore. He is guilty. He violated Singapore's laws against bringing drugs into it, even if it is in transit.
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