Almoguera Pigeon |
Singapore (EFE) the hope that there will be a twist in the script in a case denounced for its irregularities.
“He has a lot of faith and is very hopeful that a presidential pardon will save his life. He remains positive, ”Leela, who has visited her brother in Changi prison every day, tells EFE since the Singapore authorities set a date for the execution a week ago: April 26.
Tangaraju, a 46-year-old Singaporean of Tamil origin, was sentenced to death in 2017 for “accomplices in a conspiracy to traffic” 1kg of marijuana from Malaysia to Singapore four years earlier, though he and his lawyers say he never saw or touched drugs and that he was implicated by third parties for some telephone exchanges whose content was not presented at the trial either.
A marijuana user since he was a teenager, “Appu” grew up in a humble family and spent his youth in and out of juvenile facilities and prison, Leela says.
It was as a result of an arrest for failing to appear for a drug test while on probation that he was implicated in this case.
“Even his lawyer advised him not to plead guilty, so they would have lowered his sentence to 12 years in prison, seeing that the evidence was so weak,” laments his sister.
But the strategy did not work, and the 2017 death sentence was upheld by another court at the end of 2022, after the last possible appeal.
imminent execution
Exhausted by his attempts to explore all possible avenues to stop her now, including a clemency letter sent to Singaporean President Halimah Yacob on Sunday, Leela pleads for justice and maintains her brother’s innocence.
However, presidential pardons are rare in Singapore: the last one dates from 1998, in a murder case, according to the record of the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), an island NGO that calls for the abolition of capital punishment.
“We are used to seeing acts of injustice, but with this we are shocked by how weak the evidence is and how easy it is to send someone to the gallows,” Kokila Annamalai, a spokesperson for said NGO and who accompanies Leela in the interview.
Singapore, zero tolerance for drugs
Cosmopolitan Singapore has one of the most draconian drug laws on the planet, providing for the death penalty for a minimum of 500 grams of marijuana trafficking, in stark contrast to the increased legalization of cannabis in several countries, including neighboring Thailand.
The island authorities defend the death penalty as an “essential component” of their judicial system and a guarantee to curb consumption -what the NGOs question-, and last year they broke records by carrying out eleven executions of drug traffickers, including that of a prisoner with intellectual disabilities, despite criticism from the UN.
Except for last-minute changes, Tangaraju will be the first to be executed in 2023, hangings that take place on the scheduled date at dawn and surrounded by secrecy.
In addition to his family and TJC, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, and NGOs such as Amnesty International (AI) have joined the demands to stop the execution.
For his part, British billionaire Richard Branson has stressed on Twitter: “Singapore may murder an innocent man. It is a shocking case, since the defendant never came close to the drugs in question.
waiting in prison
Meanwhile, Leela says that Tangaraju lives the wait “somewhat confused but with faith”, and that, although at first she refused to participate in a photo session that the prison prepares for the week before the execution, she finally agreed to take them to leave them. as a souvenir to the members of his family who have not been able to visit him.
Among them, his mother, admitted to a center for the elderly and to whom Leela has not yet wanted to tell about the possible end of her son. “She is very depressed and we don’t want this to sink her,” she told EFE.
Leela only has good words about her little brother. “He is very generous… He didn’t have time for anything, not even to have hobbies or a relationship,” she says sadly.
That thought infuriates her for the first time since the talk began, and only then does she raise her tone. “The death penalty has not stopped drug use in Singapore. Consuming is not a crime. Taking someone’s life for it is, ”she proclaims.