Posted on 04/27/2022 1:48:51 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Singapore on Wednesday executed a mentally disabled Malaysian man condemned for a drug offense after a court dismissed a last-minute challenge from his mother and international pleas to spare him.
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, 34, had been on death row for over a decade after he was convicted of trafficking about one-and-a-half ounces of heroin into Singapore. The city-state's government has said its use of the death penalty for drug crimes is made clear at its borders.
Nagaenthran's family and social activists confirmed the execution Wednesday.
"On this score may I declare that Malaysia is far more humane," his sister Sarmila Dharmalingam said. "Zero to Singapore on this."
Nagaenthran's supporters and lawyers said he had an IQ of 69 and was intellectually disabled, and that the execution of a mentally ill person was prohibited under international human rights law.
Singapore's courts ruled, citing psychiatrists' testimony in court, that he was not mentally disabled and had understood his actions at the time of his crime.
"Nagaenthran Dharmalingam's name will go down in history as the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice," said Maya Foa, director of non-governmental organization Reprieve.
"Hanging an intellectually disabled, mentally unwell man because he was coerced into carrying less than three tablespoons of diamorphine is unjustifiable and a flagrant violation of international laws that Singapore has chosen to sign up to."
Nagaenthran and his mother had filed a motion Monday arguing that it was unconstitutional to proceed with his death sentence and that he may not have been given a fair trial because the chief justice who presided over his appeals had been the attorney general when Nagaenthran was convicted in 2010, which the filing alleged could be a conflict of interest.
The court dismissed the motion, describing it as "frivolous."
His family said Nagaenthran's body will be brought to their hometown in Malaysia's northern state of Perak, where they have made preparations for his funeral.
Singapore had halted executions for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic before resuming them with the execution of a drug trafficker in March.
Anyone found with over a half-ounce of heroin faces the death sentence in Singapore, although judges can reduce that to life in prison at their discretion. Attempts to reduce Nagaenthran's sentence or obtain a presidential pardon failed.
Malaysia's leader, European Union representatives and global figures such as British business magnate Richard Branson called for Nagaenthran's life to be spared and used the case to advocate for ending capital punishment.
So move to Malaysia then.
Who's stopping ya?
Low IQ is NOT “mentally disabled’.
You traffic dangerous drugs, you get tried and executed in Singapore. Been like that for decades.
I am unsure if it is in multiple languages or just English - but it's not like they're not giving fair warning before you enter customs.
Singapore is a serious country. They don’t play games. If you can’t play by their rules, don’t go there.
They even give full disclosure of the rules to people entering the country and will assist them in leaving if they decide not to enter because they don’t like (but have not yet broken) the rules.
And then we have people from unserious countries who demand serious ones lower or remove their basic rule-of-law standards to accommodate criminals and other various degenerates. That’s how a serious country becomes an unserious one, and ever increasing crime, chaos, depravity and lack of accountability ensue (see: United States).
"an IQ of 69"
I wouldn’t mind if we had the same law.
Let’s send them murderous drug dealers in the big Dem run cities on a little visit to Singapore.
They will never come back.
Meanwhile, a 10 year old girl in the U.S.A. can’t even ride her bike home without a terrible fate. Police chief says at least they found her body, and that’s something to be grateful for. Nothing will bring her back.
I think in the late sixties (Vietnam war era)....they had various Americans in the Army with low IQ, and that didn’t seem to be a big deal.
Putting a citizen to death ain’t for sissies.
They were the ones in command at the Pentagon and congress.
An IQ of 69 might not be, but one low enough would almost certainly qualify one as being mentally disabled.
What that number is is beyond my area of expertise.
I am sure the court took all that into consideration before finding him guilty and executing him.
Of course his family will claim he was “mentally disabled”.
Well he is dead and nothing can bring him back.
That IQ would put him in the top ten in Detoilet.
Low IQ Score Classifications
IQ Range Descriptive Classification
1 to 24 Profound mental disability
25 to 39 Severe mental disability
40 to 54 Moderate mental disability
55 to 69 Mild mental disability
70 to 79 Borderline mental disability
80 to 89 Low average
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-considered-a-low-iq-2795282
There are parts of the world where an IQ like that is fairly average.
I’d point out that when a top Chinese corporate official was arrested by Canada that the Chinese expected that official would be let go because they wanted her back. The Chinese expected that Canada would respond the way they would respond had the Chinese official been arrested in China. Canada is not China. Singapore is not the rest of the world. When in Rome...The rest of the world considers that the American justice system, which occasionally executes someone, is barbaric.
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