SINGAPORE / CHINA: Singapore hangs 21-year-old Nigerian for drug smuggling, despite calls for clemency

Record ID: 608848

  • Title: SINGAPORE / CHINA: Singapore hangs 21-year-old Nigerian for drug smuggling, despite calls for clemency
  • Date: 26th January 2007
  • Summary: (BN01) SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE (JANUARY 26, 2007) (REUTERS) (NIGHT SHOTS) EXTERIOR OF SINGAPORE'S CHANGI PRISON SIGN READING: "CLUSTER 'A'. SINGAPORE PRISON SERVICE" PRISON GUARD INSIDE PRISON SECURITY BUILDING PRISON GUARD ON WATCHTOWER CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS LIGHTING CANDLES OUTSIDE PRISON CLOSE-UP OF CANDLES BEING PLACED ON PAVEMENT OUTSIDE PRISON CANDLES AND PHOTOGRAPH OF
  • Embargoed: 10th February 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVA58A9DOZD27Q3MUUOEEF200FYI
  • Story Text: Singapore hanged a 21-year-old Nigerian man for drug smuggling on Friday (January 26), despite pleas from the Nigerian president, the United Nations and international human rights groups to spare his life.
    Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi was hanged at about 6 a.m. (2200 GMT) at the city-state's Changi prison, Stanley Seah, assistant superintendent at Singapore's Central Narcotics Bureau, told Reuters.
    As the hours counted down to his death, human rights activists gathered outside Singapore's Changi Prison on Friday morning to hold a silent candlelight vigil -- many holding out hope that the decision would be reversed.
    "We have been hoping that someone would call, someone would give us, come with some news and say there's been clemency granted, and you know, it's half an hour before the boy gets hanged and it's just with a very heavy heart that I think we are all gathering here and sitting here and thinking what this boy must be going through right now," activist Siok Chin Chee told Reuters Television, just half an hour before Tochi's death.
    "Personally I feel that the death penalty itself is bad enough, but in this case it's even worse in the sense that the judge himself, the High Court judge says that there is no way, no evidence that the accused knows about the drugs in this case and yet he is powerless to do anything to help him and yet we are going to send a man to the gallow for that," added another activist, John Tan.
    Tochi was arrested at Singapore's Changi Airport in November 2004 for carrying about 727 grams (25.6 ounces) of heroin.
    His conviction and subsequent death sentence sparked outrage from activists and human rights organisations around the world.
    Amnesty International, which appealed to Singapore last week to spare Tochi's life, said the judge who convicted Tochi of drug smuggling "appears to have accepted that he might not have realised the substance he was carrying was heroin".
    Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo also asked the Singapore government on Tuesday (January 23) to grant a reprieve to Tochi, who was a champion football player in Nigeria according to human rights group Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign.
    The Nigerian Embassy in Singapore said Tochi's family had not travelled to Singapore to see him because they cannot afford the plane tickets.
    In Geneva, the United Nations' special investigator for extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions said on Thursday (January 25) that Singapore would be violating international legal standards on the use of the death penalty if it went ahead with the hanging.
    The death sentence is mandatory for anyone caught carrying more than 15 grams of heroin in Singapore, which enforces one of the harshest anti-drug laws in the world.
    The hanging of Tochi comes more than a year after Singapore hanged an Australian man, Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, in December 2005 amid much public outcry, and despite repeated pleas for clemency, including from the Australian parliament.
    Singapore has the highest per capita execution rate in the world, and has hanged more than 420 people since 1991, according to Amnesty International.
    The death penalties in Singapore's anti-drug laws have been criticised by human rights groups as inhumane. But the Singapore government say they are necessary because of the city-state's close location to drug-producing countries.
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