 MELBOURNE - A lawyer who tried and failed to save an Australian drug trafficker executed by Singapore urged Canberra Saturday to protest the use of the death penalty in the United States.
Julian McMahon was speaking as he arrived back in the southern city of Melbourne, the day after 25-year-old Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged at Singaporeâs Changi prison despite repeated appeals for clemency from Prime Minister John Howard. Nguyen went to the gallows the same day that convicted murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd became the 1,000th person put to death in the United States since capital punishment resumed there in 1977.
âSome laws are wrong, and we have an obligation to speak out against those laws wherever they are,â McMahon told Australian Associated Press. âThe Australian community has a reawakened awareness from this case that premeditated state-sanctioned killing is wrong,â he said of Nguyenâs execution.
| Seems to me that if you'd done your job a little better you wouldn't be talking with the Singaporan authorities about where to ship your client's remains. |
=âWe should not be afraid to speak the truth to our powerful friend the United States,â McMahon added.
| "Just because the Singaporans didn't listen to me -- and that cane hurts, let me tell you -- doesn't mean we shouldn't badger the Americans. They don't cane people, you know." |
Nguyenâs execution sparked an outcry in Australia. Vigils were held across the country Friday morning and gongs and bells rang out 25 times - once for every kilogram of heroin he was smuggling year of his life - at the hour of his hanging.
McMahon was scathing in his criticism of Singaporeâs mandatory death penalty for drug smugglers. âIt is even more legally and morally repugnant when it is mandatory, premeditated state-sanctioned killing,â he said.
| So you're also angry with Saddam, right? Hello? |
But while he was critical of the Singapore justice system, he praised Nguyenâs jailers. âBy the time Van died everyone involved in the case knew the prison workers had only been kindly to him and he loved them, to use his words,â McMahon said.
| "Please don't let them cane me again!" |
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