Singapore – Masoud Rahimi Mehrzad’s father was in a distant a part of Iran when he obtained 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 studies.
As a substitute, the ultimate contact between the daddy and son got here by way of a long-distance cellphone 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, grew to become the ninth particular person to be hanged in Singapore this 12 months.
“With 4 executions in November alone, the Singaporean authorities is relentlessly pursuing its merciless use of the loss of life penalty,” mentioned Bryony Lau, Deputy Director for Asia at Human Rights Watch.
Anti-death penalty marketing campaign teams consider that about 50 inmates are at present on loss of life 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 the earth”.
A gaggle of UN consultants mentioned in a joint assertion final month that Singapore ought to “transfer from a reliance on legal regulation and take a human rights-based strategy in relation to drug use and drug use problems”.
Tales of the plight of loss of life row inmates typically come from activists, who work tirelessly to battle for the rights of these going through the final 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 an in depth bond with many loss of life row prisoners.
“They’re extra than simply individuals we’re campaigning for. They’re additionally our mates, they really feel like our siblings. It’s been very tough 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 loss of life 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 prices.
In Could 2010, aged 20, he drove to fulfill 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 baggage that they discovered within the automotive.
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 loss of life penalty.
Masoud advised police that he was affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction and nervousness. He additionally blamed an unlawful money-lending syndicate for planting the medication with the intention to body him.
His defence didn’t get up in courtroom and he was sentenced to loss of life 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 loss of life sentence had inflicted on their father.
“My dad was utterly heartbroken, and he has by no means recovered. One in every of my brothers died when he was 7 years outdated, from appendicitis … dropping one other son, he couldn’t settle for it,” she wrote.
Masoud had fought tirelessly to attraction 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 loss of life 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 battle for his life in addition to the others, and he needs for everybody on loss of life row to really feel the identical motivation, to be there for one another,” she mentioned.
‘Individuals begin to care deeply’
In October, Masoud was certainly one of 13 loss of life row prisoners who gained a case towards the Singapore Jail Service and the Lawyer Normal ‘s Chambers, after they had been deemed to have acted unlawfully by disclosing and requesting the personal letters of prisoners.
The courtroom additionally discovered that the prisoners’ proper to confidentiality had been breached.
Masoud was additionally as a result of signify a gaggle of 31 prisoners in a constitutional problem towards a brand new regulation referring to the post-appeal course of in loss of life penalty instances. A listening to in that authorized problem continues 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 courtroom 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.
In accordance with information studies, 25 prisoners have been executed in Singapore since 2022, with the authorities displaying 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 non-public tales of loss of life row prisoners.
Nevertheless, they’ve began to obtain “correction orders” from authorities authorities, that are issued beneath Singapore’s controversial pretend information regulation.
Annamalai’s TJC group has been focused with the regulation – the Safety from On-line Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) – over a number of posts referring to loss of life row instances.
The marketing campaign group has been instructed to incorporate a “correction discover” with their authentic posts and likewise share a web-based hyperlink to a authorities web site, for additional clarification.
“It’s at all times a narrative of a prisoner going through 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 “individuals 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 directly,” seven anti-death penalty teams mentioned in a joint assertion in October.
Elizabeth Wooden, CEO of the Capital Punishment Justice Venture, 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 medication. 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 loss of life penalty”.
Annamalai of TJC mentioned she’s going to proceed her activism, regardless of going through a POFMA correction order for a put up on her private Fb web page.
Although going through the danger of a superb 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.