SINGAPORE UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE FOR AUSTRALIAN

SINGAPORE - A Singapore court upheld on Wednesday the death
sentence for a 24-year-old Australian man of Vietnamese origin found
guilty of smuggling 400 grammes of heroin while in transit at the
island's main airport.

Nguyen Tuong Van, arrested at Changi airport in December 2002 while
travelling from Cambodia to Melbourne, will be hanged unless his
lawyers and rights group Amnesty International win a bid for clemency
from Singapore President S.R. Nathan.

If the petition fails, Van will be the first Australian citizen
executed in Singapore.

Wearing loose orange prison overalls, with his hands shackled, Van
showed little emotion as a Court of Appeal judge read the verdict to a
courtroom that included Australia's High Commissioner and Van's
mother, who wept after the sentence.

A day after London-based Amnesty challenged Singapore to disclose the
total number of executions this year, the government revealed for the
first time that 6 people had been hanged between January and September
and 19 for the whole of 2003.

Australian envoy Gary Quinlan said on Wednesday Canberra was urging
Nathan to commute Van's sentence to a prison term.

"We will be supporting any clemency based on the very specific
compassionate and humanitarian circumstances which surround this
case," he told reporters after the verdict.

In 1994, Singapore caused a diplomatic furore when it turned down
Dutch government pleas for clemency and hanged 59-year-old Dutchman
Johannes Van Damme for trafficking about 4.5 kg of heroin.

Singapore's drug laws are among the world's harshest. Anyone aged 18
or over convicted of carrying more than 15 grammes of heroin faces
mandatory execution by hanging.

Van, a former salesman, told a narcotics officer soon after his arrest
that he had carried the drugs on behalf of a Sydney-based drugs
syndicate in a desperate bid to pay off legal fees owed by his twin
brother.

A policewoman discovered a package of heroin taped to his back during
a pre-flight security check, and another in his hand luggage.

About 400 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for
drug trafficking, giving the wealthy city-state of 4.2 million people
possibly the highest execution rate in the world relative to its
population, Amnesty International says. Amnesty says only 6 people
sentenced to death in Singapore have been spared execution.

Singapore staunchly defends its use of the death penalty and insists
that foreigners are not to be exempted from its execution laws.

Van's lawyers had appealed the original death sentence announced in
March by questioning the way police had handled the drugs and
disputing the legality of the death penalty, which Singapore
introduced in 1975 as mandatory for drug traffickers and murderers.