Amnesty International and the Australian government...

Amnesty International and the Australian government urged Singapore to spare the life of Nguyen Tuong Van, an Australian man sentenced to hang for heroin trafficking. Singapore's highest court had the previous day rejected Nguyen's appeal to set aside his conviction and sentence. Only a rare clemency from Singapore's President S. R. Nathan could spare him from the gallows. The 24-year-old ethnic Vietnamese from Melbourne would be the first Australian citizen to be executed in Singapore if he failed to get his sentence commuted to a prison term.
In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the government would appeal directly to Singapore's president to spare Nguyen's life.
Downer said while he accepted the court's decision that Nguyen was guilty, Australia opposed capital punishment.
"It's now just a question of the sentence, and we hope that, by appealing to the president of Singapore, that it will be possible to get clemency granted and, as a result, Mr Nguyen serve an appropriate custodial sentence in Singapore," Downer said in a radio interview.
"We think that to execute him would be simply too severe," Downer said.
Downer acknowledged that the request for presidential clemency was a long shot, as Singapore had granted only six appeals in the past 25 years.