Australian national Nguyen Tuong Van made a brief appearance...

Australian national Nguyen Tuong Van made a brief appearance in a Singapore court as his lawyer appealed against a mandatory death sentence handed to him for trafficking in heroin. "A mandatory sentence is imposed without any regard to the circumstances," Nguyen's lawyer, Joseph Theseira, told the Court of Appeal. During the appeal hearing, which lasted only about 45 minutes, Theseira also said officers investigating Nguyen failed to follow standard operating procedures when they were interrogating him. Theseira questioned why the two packets of heroin weighed much less when they were sent to the Health Sciences Authority for verification compared with the first time, when they were measured by investigating officers at the airport. Nguyen had been sentenced to death in March 2004 after being caught with the drugs at Singapore's Changi airport in December 2002 while in transit from Cambodia to his home town of Melbourne, Australia's second biggest city.