Singapore Hangs Australian for Drug Trafficking
|
|
Singapore executed an Australian heroin trafficker on Friday despite a warning by Australia’s prime minister that the hanging would sour relations between their countries. The case has caused an outcry in Australia where opponents of the execution held vigils in cities around the country, with bells and gongs sounding 25 times at the hour of Nguyen’s execution. “I just think it’s barbaric, it’s wrong, it’s disturbing,” said Elizabeth Welch, a 54-year-old counselor at a vigil in Sydney. Vietnam-born Tuong Van Nguyen, 25, was hanged before dawn despite numerous appeals from Australian leaders for his life to be spared. He received a mandatory death sentence after he was caught with 14 ounces of heroin at the city-state’s Changi Airport in 2002, en route from Cambodia to Australia. Nguyen’s death came amid fresh debate about capital punishment in the United States, where North Carolina’s governor denied clemency to a man who killed his wife and father-in-law. Kenneth Lee Boyd was executed by lethal injection early Friday in the 1,000th execution in the United States since the death penalty resumed in 1977. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said his government would not take diplomatic action against Singapore. But he said the execution will affect relations “on a people-to-people, population-to-population basis.” Dressed in black, a dozen friends and supporters stood outside the maximum-security Changi Prison hours before the 6 a.m. hanging. Candles and handwritten notes containing sympathetic messages and calls for an end to Singapore’s death penalty were placed outside the prison gates. More : foxnews.com |