Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam’s prosecution, listed on Wednesday, was suspended by a Singapore court after he tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of his appeal hail.
Singapore Singapore’s envoy to the United Nations in Geneva has said that the High Court had plant that Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, an Indian- origin Malaysian facing prosecution for medicine trafficking, had frame intellectual functioning but didn’t suffer from mild intellectual disability, according to a news report.
Responding on Thursday to a common critical appeal from four special UN rapporteurs who on October 29 called on Singapore to definitively halt Nagaenthran’s prosecution, Ambassador Umej Bhatia said that the con had psychosocial disabilities, The Strait Times reported.
Nagaenthran, 33, was listed to be hanged at Changi Prison on Wednesday. Still, the prosecution was suspended on Tuesday by the Court of Appeal after he tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of his appeal hail.
In his reply, Mr Bhatia said that during Nagaenthran’sre-sentencing hearing several times agone, the High Court had specifically considered whether he met the individual criteria for intellectual disability under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Diseases (DSM-V).
Nagaenthran had filed the operation in February 2015, and the High Court, which dismissed it in September 2017, plant that he didn’t suffer from mild intellectual disability.
“In coming to this finding, the High Court noted that the DSM-V stated that”IQ test scores are approximations of abstract functioning but may be inadequate to assess logic in real life situations and mastery of practical tasks”,” said Mr Bhatia.
The substantiation considered included the evidence of Nagaenthran’s own psychiatric expert, who agreed that he wasn’t suffering from any intellectual disability.
“The High Court and Court of Appeal held that Nagaenthran easily understood the nature of his acts and didn’t lose his sense of judgment of the rightness or impropriety of what he was doing,” said Mr Bhatia.
“Despite knowing the unlawfulness of his acts, he shouldered the felonious bid so that he could pay off some part of a financial debt. The Court of Appeal plant that this was the working of a felonious mind, importing the pitfalls and countervailing benefits associated with the felonious conduct in question, and that Nagaenthran took a calculated threat which, contrary to his prospects, materialised.
“It was a deliberate, purposeful and advised decision on Nagaenthran’s part to take the chance,”he added.
UN mortal rights experts Morris Tidball-Binz, Gerard Quinn, Felipe Gonzalez Morales and Nils Melzer had claimed that awarding the death penalty for medicine crimes is inharmonious with transnational law and said the discipline should only be assessed for the most serious crimes.
” Medicine- related offences don’t meet this threshold,”they said.” Resorting to this type of discipline to help medicine trafficking isn’t only illegal under transnational law, it’s also ineffective,”The Woe Times quoted the experts as saying.
In his reply, Mr Bhatia noted that there’s no transnational agreement for or against the use of the death penalty, or on what constitutes the”most serious crimes”.
He said it’s every country’s” autonomous right”to decide the use of capital discipline” considering its own circumstances and in agreement with its transnational law scores”.
Responding to allegations that Nagaenthran’s family members were given a long list of COVID-19 rules to follow and that they weren’t permitted to take public transport to visit him in captivity, Mr Bhatia said these conditions were part of Singapore’s prevailing Covid protocols applicable to all trippers from Malaysia.
He added that the Singapore authorities have been in touch with Nagaenthran’s family members to grease their entry and stay in Singapore.
The UN experts had also asked Singapore to recognize its commitment to release data on death penalty.
Mr Bhatia said Singapore publishes the number of judicial prosecutions carried out every time in the Singapore Prison Service’s (SPS) periodic statistics release, and that the rearmost statistics for 2020 could be plant on the SPS’website.
A check plant that 13 prosecutions were carried out in 2018, four in 2019 and zero in 2020.
Nagaenthran was 21 when he was arrested in 2009 for trafficking medicines at Woodlands checkpoint on a causeway link between Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia with a pack of medicines strapped to his ham.
He was condemned and doomed to death in November 2010 for importing42.72 grams of heroin in 2009.
The Misuse of Medicines Act provides for the death judgment where the quantum of heroin imported is further than 15 grams.
The case came under the limelight late last month when the Singapore Prison Service wrote to Nagaenthran’s mama on October 26, informing her that the death judgment on her son would be carried out on November 10.