Singapore authorities announced on Wednesday that they had executed by hanging a man who was serving a life sentence for trafficking a kilogram of cannabis, ignoring calls from abroad to reconsider the case and abolish the death penalty in the city-state.

Singaporean Thagaraj Supia, 46, was “carried out today at Chagi Prison,” a spokesman for the Singapore Prison Service told AFP.

Thagaraju Supia was executed despite a call by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Tuesday for Singaporean authorities to “urgently reconsider” his hanging.

A day earlier, British billionaire Richard Branson, a member of the World Commission on Drug Control, also appealed to the city-state not to execute the 46-year-old, judging, as well as human rights activists and family members of the deceased. to a number of prisoners that he was not actually involved in the drug trade for which he was convicted and reported loopholes in the case.

But Singapore’s home ministry on Tuesday rejected Mr Branson’s appeal and assessment, accusing him of total “contempt for judges” and the country’s “criminal justice system”.

Thagaraju Supia was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 for alleged involvement in the smuggling of 1.01 kg of cannabis, twice the amount punishable by death in Singapore, a country with one of the world’s harshest drug penalties.

Source: RES-IPE