Singapore – Masoud Rahimi Mehrzad’s father was in a distant a part of Iran when he acquired the information that he had lengthy dreaded.
His son was to be hanged in Singapore’s Changi Jail.
Affected by deteriorating well being and with only a week’s discover till the execution at daybreak on November 29, he was unable to tackle the demanding journey to see his son in particular person for one final time, in response to experiences.
As a substitute, the ultimate contact between the daddy and son got here by way of a long-distance telephone name.
Regardless of a last-ditch authorized problem, Masoud was hanged on the ultimate Friday of November, greater than 14 years after he was first arrested for drug offences.
Masoud, 35, turned the ninth particular person to be hanged in Singapore this yr.
“With 4 executions in November alone, the Singaporean authorities is relentlessly pursuing its merciless use of the dying penalty,” mentioned Bryony Lau, Deputy Director for Asia at Human Rights Watch.
Anti-death penalty marketing campaign teams imagine that about 50 inmates are at present on dying row in Singapore.
Regardless of opposition from outstanding human rights teams and United Nations consultants, Singapore claims that capital punishment has been “an efficient deterrent” towards drug traffickers and ensures the city-state is “one of many most secure locations on this planet”.
A gaggle of UN consultants mentioned in a joint assertion final month that Singapore ought to “transfer from a reliance on felony legislation and take a human rights-based strategy in relation to drug use and drug use issues”.
Tales of the plight of dying row inmates typically come from activists, who work tirelessly to struggle for the rights of these dealing with the last word punishment.
The current wave of executions has now left them shaken.
“It’s a nightmare,” says Kokila Annamalai, a outstanding anti-death penalty campaigner with the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC).
Her work has led her to type a detailed bond with many dying row prisoners.
“They’re extra than simply folks we’re campaigning for. They’re additionally our buddies, they really feel like our siblings. It’s been very troublesome for us personally,” Annamalai advised Al Jazeera.
‘Shedding one other son, he couldn’t settle for it’
Like nearly all of Singapore’s prisoners on dying row, Masoud was convicted for drug offences.
Born in Singapore to an Iranian father and Singaporean mom, he had spent his childhood between Iran and Dubai.
On the age of 17, he returned to Singapore to finish his obligatory nationwide service and it was throughout this era in his life that he was arrested on drug costs.
In Could 2010, aged 20, he drove to satisfy a Malaysian man at a petroleum station in central Singapore. Masoud took a bundle from the person, earlier than driving away. He was quickly stopped by the police. They searched the bundle and another luggage that they discovered within the automobile.
In whole, officers found greater than 31 grams of diamorphine, which is often known as heroin, and 77 grams of methamphetamine.
Masoud was arrested for possessing medication with the aim of trafficking.
Beneath Singapore’s strict legal guidelines, anybody caught carrying greater than 15 grams of heroin can face the dying penalty.
Masoud advised police that he was affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction and anxiousness. He additionally blamed an unlawful money-lending syndicate for planting the medication with a purpose to body him.
His defence didn’t arise in court docket and he was sentenced to dying in 2015.
Masoud’s sister, Mahnaz, launched an open letter shortly earlier than her brother was hanged final month. She described the ache that the dying sentence had inflicted on their father.
“My dad was utterly heartbroken, and he has by no means recovered. Certainly one of my brothers died when he was 7 years previous, from appendicitis … shedding one other son, he couldn’t settle for it,” she wrote.
Masoud had fought tirelessly to enchantment his conviction, however his quite a few authorized challenges failed, as did a plea for clemency to Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
Earlier than his personal execution, Masoud’s sister recounted how her brother had devoted his time on dying row to serving to different prisoners with their very own authorized battles.
“He’s very invested in serving to them discover peace,” Mahnaz mentioned.
“He feels it’s his accountability to struggle for his life in addition to the others, and he needs for everybody on dying row to really feel the identical motivation, to be there for one another,” she mentioned.
‘Individuals begin to care deeply’
In October, Masoud was one among 13 dying row prisoners who received a case towards the Singapore Jail Service and the Legal professional Basic ‘s Chambers, after they had been deemed to have acted unlawfully by disclosing and requesting the non-public letters of prisoners.
The court docket additionally discovered that the prisoners’ proper to confidentiality had been breached.
Masoud was additionally attributable to symbolize a bunch of 31 prisoners in a constitutional problem towards a brand new legislation regarding the post-appeal course of in dying penalty circumstances. A listening to in that authorized problem remains to be scheduled for late January 2025, a date that’s now too late for Masoud.
Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau mentioned the truth that Masoud’s execution was carried out prematurely of the upcoming excessive court docket listening to was “not related to his conviction or sentence”.
After a two-year pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic, executions have ramped up in recent times within the Southeast Asian finance hub.
Based on information experiences, 25 prisoners have been executed in Singapore since 2022, with the authorities exhibiting little prospect of softening their strategy to capital punishment for drug traffickers.
Anti-death penalty campaigners within the city-state proceed to voice their outrage on the authorities’s actions, utilizing social media to amplify the private tales of dying row prisoners.
Nevertheless, they’ve began to obtain “correction orders” from authorities authorities, that are issued underneath Singapore’s controversial faux information legislation.
Annamalai’s TJC group has been focused with the legislation – the Safety from On-line Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) – over a number of posts regarding dying row circumstances.
The marketing campaign group has been instructed to incorporate a “correction discover” with their unique posts and in addition share a web-based hyperlink to a authorities web site, for additional clarification.
“It’s all the time a narrative of a prisoner dealing with imminent execution that will get POFMA’d”, Annamalai mentioned.
Describing these tales of particular person prisoners as “essentially the most highly effective”, Annamalai says the group has been particularly focused as a result of “folks begin to care deeply and wish to take motion once they learn them”.
‘Attempting to silence us’
Rights teams have hit out on the authorities’ current concentrating on of activist teams.
“We condemn within the strongest phrases the continued intimidation and local weather of concern that the authorities have created round anti-death penalty activism in Singapore and demand that the harassment of activists ceases without delay,” seven anti-death penalty teams mentioned in a joint assertion in October.
Elizabeth Wooden, CEO of the Capital Punishment Justice Challenge, based mostly in Melbourne, Australia, and one of many seven signatories to the letter, mentioned that these preventing to finish executions are being solid as “glorifying” drug traffickers.
“They introduced that they’d be making a day of remembrance for the victims of medicine. That’s one other means to accuse activists of glorifying and making an attempt to humanise drug traffickers,” Wooden mentioned.
Human Rights Watch’s Lau mentioned the “Singaporean authorities mustn’t use its repressive and overly broad legal guidelines to aim to silence anti-death penalty activists”.
Singapore’s Ministry of House Affairs declined an interview request from Al Jazeera.
In a current assertion, the House Affairs Ministry mentioned they “don’t goal, silence and harass organisations and people merely for talking out towards the dying penalty”.
Annamalai of TJC mentioned she is going to proceed her activism, regardless of dealing with a POFMA correction order for a submit on her private Fb web page.
Although dealing with the danger of a high quality or perhaps a jail sentence, Annamalai mentioned she is not going to make a correction.
“They’re aggressively and desperately making an attempt to silence us, however they won’t succeed,” she added.
