SINGAPORE executes more people per capita than any other country so, by local standards at least, there will be nothing remarkable about the hanging of Van Tuong Nguyen. Just before 6am next Friday, after a final meeting with his mother and his last meal, Nguyen will be handcuffed and led from his cell to the execution chamber of Changi prison.

Darshan Singh, the 73-year-old hangman, will place the hood over Nguyen’s head, the noose around his neck and spring the trapdoor. In a 46-year career, he has executed more than 850 prisoners.

In one respect alone this one will be unusual: Nguyen is an Australian and, as he enters the last week of his life, the 25-year-old’s predicament has caused national indignation in his home country.

Australian activists have called for a boycott of Singaporean goods and companies. Letters of protest have poured in to the Singapore Government.

John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, Alexander Downer, the Foreign Minister, and the present and late Pope have appealed unsuccessfully for clemency.

All this for a self-confessed drug smuggler whose name was unknown to most Australians until a few weeks ago. In the past year there have been a number of high-profile cases involving young Australians charged with drug offences abroad, but in none of them have the facts of the case been so clear — or so pathetic — as that of Van Tuong Nguyen.

He was arrested at Changi airport in Singapore in December 2002, carrying 396g of pure heroin. His full and immediate confession has never been disputed by the defence, and the poignant details of his wellintentioned stupidity are the source of much of the sympathy for him in Australia.

He was born in a Thai refugee camp to a Vietnamese boat refugee, who raised him and his twin brother, Khoa, alone. He grew up in Melbourne, joined the Scouts, worked part-time at McDonald’s and is described by those who know him as a decent, cheerful and dutiful young man. He was working as a computer salesman when his twin began to get into trouble.

Khoa started taking drugs and ended up with two convictions and legal fees amounting to A$30,000 (£13,000). It was to pay off his brother’s debts, Van Tuong Nguyen has always maintained, that he agreed to act as a “mule” for a group of drug dealers based in Sydney.

Soon after he flew to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, things began to go wrong. Mr Nguyen was instructed to reduce the heroin to a fine powder in a coffee grinder and strap it to his body in two slim packages.

“I didn’t really know how to go about doing that,” he told the Singaporean police. “So I just did what I thought would work.”

On the plane one of the packages became so uncomfortable that he pulled it off his abdomen and slipped it into his backpack. Changing planes in Singapore, he passed through a metal detector, which was set off by his metal-rimmed sunglasses. The guard who frisked him felt the second packet strapped to his back.

“He asked me what that was and I replied, ‘It’s heroin, sir’,” Mr Nguyen said. “He asked me if I was sure. I told him, ‘Of course’.”

After his arrest he showed consistent remorse and co-operated fully with the authorities. Information that he provided to the Australian police led to the arrest of a drug dealer in Sydney. But Singaporean law is clear and unbending: for quantities of more than 15g of heroin, death by hanging is not the maximum penalty, but the mandatory one.

Darshan Singh hanged 138 people between 1998 and 2003, and 110 of them were not murderers, rapists or gun runners, but drug traffickers.

Last year a UN report revealed that Singapore executes a higher proportion of its population than any other country; 13.57 per one million of population, compared with 4.65 per million in Saudi Arabia and 2 per million in China.

The Think Centre, one of the city state’s few anti-capital punishment NGOs, asked: “If this inhumane practice is really a deterrent, how come, after 40 years of executions, we still have the highest per capita execution rate in the world, with the greatest known proportion of these executions small-time drug mules?”

Mr Howard has appealed for mercy, but Mr Nguyen’s supporters accused him of expressing insufficient indignation. Having passively endorsed the death penalty for the Bali bombers who killed so many Australians, he is not best placed to denounce Singapore for the same sentence, they say.

After a slow start, the Australian media is devoting great attention to the story, especially to the anguish of Mr Nguyen’s mother, Kim, and to the twin, Khoa.

He wrote a letter to his friends and supporters that sounds very like a final goodbye. “I’ve thought long and hard about the content, the topics and the words that will fill this page,” it reads. “Just know that I’m thinking of you and praying for you every day . . . I love you with all my heart, take care, be strong.”

TOUGH JUSTICE

Offences that can incur fines include jaywalking, spitting and failing to flush a lavatory correctly

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