Reacting to the executions of Chijioke Stephen Obioha, a Nigerian national, and Devendran Supramaniam, a Malaysian national, by the Singapore authorities, Josef Benedict, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said:
“The Singapore authorities have brazenly violated international law with these shameful executions. The death penalty is a cruel and irreversible punishment that most of the world has turned its back on. Singapore continues to remain an outlier, executing people for crimes that do not meet the ‘most serious’ threshold to which the death penalty must be restricted under international law.
“The executions took place secretively, with some details only emerging at the eleventh hour. When a person’s life is involved, the authorities must be fully transparent about their actions, to ensure that everyone has a right to a fair trial and due process is followed, allowing the families and the public at large can have easily access to all information on the case. The death penalty is never a solution. It will not rid Singapore of drugs or serve as an effective deterrent.”
Chijioke Stephen Obioha, a Nigerian graduate who first came to Singapore for a football trial, is set to be hung at dawn tomorrow after the Court of Appeal dismissed an Urgent Criminal Motion filed by his lawyer, Mr Joseph Chen. Chijoke was first arrested in 2007 and sentenced to the Mandatory Death Penalty in 2008 after being found guilty of trafficking more than 2kg of Cannabis
He was executed at 6am on Friday morning, after a criminal motion filed by his lawyer, Joseph Chen was rejected by the Court of Appeal.