Nguyen Tuong Van: No hug allowed before death
Australian Van Tuong Nguyen and his mother will be allowed to hold hands, but not to hug, before he is put to death. Singaporean officials today said they would grant Kim Nguyen an exemption from a total ban on physical contact with death row inmates.
Kim Nguyen had asked to be able to hug her son one final time before he is executed at dawn tomorrow morning. But in a statement, the Singapore Government said it would allow only limited physical contact between the condemned man and his mother and brother Khoa.
"Mr Nguyen will be allowed to hold hands with his mother and brother," the statement from Singapore's ministry of foreign affairs said. It said it had agreed to the request for contact after a personal appeal by Prime Minister John Howard to his Singaporean counterpart, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta.
Google News reports are here. Details of Nguyen Tuong Van's short, troubled and sad life are here. I maintain that he was intensely stupid, incredibly stupid but I still believe that the penalty exceeds the crime - which is always the danger when you have mandatory crimes that gives sentencers no discretion to consider individual circumstances.
Kim Nguyen had asked to be able to hug her son one final time before he is executed at dawn tomorrow morning. But in a statement, the Singapore Government said it would allow only limited physical contact between the condemned man and his mother and brother Khoa.
"Mr Nguyen will be allowed to hold hands with his mother and brother," the statement from Singapore's ministry of foreign affairs said. It said it had agreed to the request for contact after a personal appeal by Prime Minister John Howard to his Singaporean counterpart, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta.
Google News reports are here. Details of Nguyen Tuong Van's short, troubled and sad life are here. I maintain that he was intensely stupid, incredibly stupid but I still believe that the penalty exceeds the crime - which is always the danger when you have mandatory crimes that gives sentencers no discretion to consider individual circumstances.