Death Penalty News

Despite Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam’s claim that drug traffickers are aware of the mandatory death penalty sentence in Singapore, there has been a spike in the number of attempts related to drug trafficking into the Republic, he told Reuters on Wed (31 Jul). While Mr Shanmugam told the 2nd Asia-Pacific Forum Against Drugs in Oct last year that the death penalty for drug traffickers cannot serve as a panacea for all drug-related issues plaguing Singapore society, the Minister maintained that the government, albeit reluctantly, must retain the death penalty “for the greater good of society”, as it “saves more lives”, referring to those who will be spared from falling into drug addiction. Stating that drug traffickers are fully aware of the risks of being arrested, prosecuted, and - in most cases - sentenced to death, Mr Shanmugam said that the prospect of facing the gallows "has a very powerful influence on those who seek to traffic drugs into Singapore...

Indonesian police said some of the five foreigners who have been arrested for alleged drug smuggling on the tourist island of Bali since the end of November will face the death penalty if they are convicted. Five foreigners, from Peru, Britain, China, Malaysia and Germany, were paraded by police at a news conference on Thursday in Denpasar in Bali. The accused, all individual men whose cases are not related, have been arrested since November 30 this year. The drugs allegedly seized from the men included four kilograms of cocaine, as well as marijuana, ecstasy and ketamine. Indonesia has strict drug laws and dozens of convicted smugglers are currently on death row. The last executions in the country happened in July 2016, when an Indonesian national and three foreigners were shot by a firing squad. Two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were the ringleaders of the Bali Nine drug smuggling group, were executed on April 29, 2015. A police sta...