Nagaenthran accorded full due process: S’pore leaders reply to M’sian counterparts

SINGAPORE – Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan had replied to their Malaysian counterparts on Tuesday to convey that Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam had been accorded full due process under the law.

This was according to the republic’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman in a statement issued here in response to media queries on the appeal letters from Malaysian leaders on the judicial execution of Nagaenthran.

On Thursday, Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry (Wisma Putra) said the government through Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob and Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Abdullah this week, once again sent letters to their counterparts in Singapore in an effort to ask the country’s government to consider and to commute his sentence.

The first letter to the Singapore government was sent by the prime minister and foreign minister in November last year.

In December, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah also sent a letter to the president of the Republic of Singapore to commute Nagaenthran’s death sentence.

Nagaenthran, 34, was executed on April 27 at Changi Prison, Singapore.

Hailing from Perak, Nagaenthran was sentenced to death in 2010 for trafficking 42.72g of heroin into Singapore in 2009.

He was supposed to have been executed on November 10 last year but found temporary respite on November 9 after the court was told he had tested positive for Covid-19 when he appeared for a final appeal against his death sentence.

Nagaenthran’s lawyers claim that he is intellectually disabled. – Bernama, April 29, 2022