Eleventh-hour bid to save Malaysian’s life as group warns Singapore against rushing duo’s execution

Lawyers for two individuals including a Malaysian have filed a fresh bid to save their lives hours before their execution tomorrow in Singapore, after the city-state’s appeals court dismissed their application to have their executions halted.

The court’s dismissal of an urgent application by Malaysian citizen Pausi Jefridin and Singaporean Roslan Bakar, who have been scheduled for the gallows tomorrow despite experts’ reports on their low mental capabilities, prompted rights group Lawyers for Liberty to warn the city-state against rushing the executions.

Meanwhile, a fresh judicial review application was filed on an urgent basis this evening.

“This pending application must be heard by the Singapore courts, and no execution must be carried out until this legal process is exhausted.

“We urge the Singapore government and the judicial authorities to ensure that the execution as scheduled tomorrow does not take place in view of Pausi and Roslan’s rights to pursue their pending legal actions to the conclusion,” LFL, which has been a vocal critic of Singapore’s human rights records, said in a statement.

MalaysiaNow earlier reported that Pausi’s family in Sabah had been given a seven-day notice of his execution date.

“This is grotesque cruelty,” Singaporean anti-death penalty activist Kirsten Han had said.

During his trial, the court was told that Pausi had an IQ level of 67, which is below the threshold of 70 for declaring a person as intellectually disabled, based on an assessment by leading Singapore clinical psychologist Dr Danny Ng.

Meanwhile, Roslan was found by experts to have “limited capacity for judgment and decision-making due to underlying cognitive defects”, according to a 2017 judgment sighted by MalaysiaNow.

Their case is similar to that of Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a Malaysian diagnosed with an IQ of 69 who was to have been executed in November last year.

He was granted a stay of execution after a diagnosis of Covid-19 just before the court was due to hear a last-ditch appeal to save his life.

His hearing is believed to have been set for this month.

Nagaenthran’s plight drew public outrage, with pleas for leniency coming from Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah and Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, of which Singapore is a signatory, the execution of a person with mental disability is prohibited.

Similarly, Section 33B(3) of Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act prohibits the death sentence on persons who suffer from retarded development of mind that would impair their mental responsibility for their actions.