A Singapore court upheld the death sentence for a 24-year-old...

A Singapore court upheld the death sentence for a 24-year-old Australian man of Vietnamese origin found guilty of smuggling 400 grams (14 ounces) of heroin while in transit at the island's main airport.
Nguyen Tuong Van, arrested at Changi airport in December 2002 while traveling from Cambodia to Melbourne, would be hanged unless his lawyers and rights group Amnesty International won a bid for clemency from Singapore President S.R. Nathan. Australian envoy Gary Quinlan said 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.
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.
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.