FILIPINO SENTENCED TO HANG IN MALAYSIA FOR DRUGS

KUALA LUMPUR, June 22 (Reuters) - A Malaysian court on Monday sentenced a
Philippine national to death for dealing in cannabis, the national Bernama
news agency said.

Andy Bagindah, 28, was arrested in December 1996 with 811 grams (28 ounces)
of the drug at the back of a shop in Kudat town in Sabah state on Borneo island.

Malaysia's drug laws prescribe the mandatory death penalty for people
trafficking in more than 15 grams (0.5 ounce) of heroin or 200 grams (seven
ounces) of cannabis.

Bagindah's lawyer told the court in Sabah's capital Kota Kinabalu that his
client was a first offender and asked that he be spared the death sentence.
But Justice Richard Malanjum said death was mandatory.

Bagindah, who appeared calm when the sentence was read out, will have an
automatic right of appeal and in the meantime the execution will be stayed,
the judge said.

More than 100 people, around a third of them foreigners, have been hanged in
Malaysia for drug offences since the mandatory death sentence for
trafficking was introduced two decades ago.

Bagindah's sentence came almost exactly one year after New Zealander
Lorraine Cohen, then 53, and her son Aaron, then 30, were pardoned while
serving life sentences in the northern state of Penang for heroin trafficking.

They had served 11 years in jail after Lorraine Cohen's original death
sentence was commuted to life. Aaron Cohen received a life sentence and six
strokes of the cane.

His mother had been found guilty of trafficking 140 grams (five ounces) of
heroin, and her son for having 34 grams (1.2 ounces) of the same substance.

Malaysia shocked the world in July 1986 when it hanged two Australians for
trafficking in heroin. Australia's then prime minister Bob Hawke condemned
the act as barbaric.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett