Singapore hangs drug trafficker, third such execution in a week

Southeast Asian city-state is among a handful of countries that impose the death penalty for drug offences.

Singapore has carried out its third hanging of a convicted drug trafficker in a week despite appeals for clemency from the United Nations.

Rosman Abdullah, 55, was executed for trafficking 57.43 grams of heroin into the Southeast Asian city-state, Singapore’s drug enforcement agency said on Friday.

Rosman, a Singaporean, was “accorded full due process under the law, and was represented by legal counsel throughout the process,” the Central Narcotics Bureau said in a statement.

“Capital punishment is imposed only for the most serious crimes, such as the trafficking of significant quantities of drugs which cause very serious harm, not just to individual drug abusers, but also to their families and the wider society,” the CNB added.

UN experts had called on Singaporean authorities to spare Rosman, arguing that the death penalty does little to deter crime and that authorities had not made proper accommodations for his intellectual disabilities.