MALAYSIA. DEATH ROW INMATE FILES MOTION AGAINST LENGTH OF EXECUTION WAIT

it was reported that Malaysia's longest serving death row prisoner, Sapuan Hanim, has filed a motion with the Federal Court to commute his death sentence on the basis that for the past 15 years he had suffered from mental anguish and the pressure of waking up every day wondering whether it was going to be his last day alive. It was the first time in Malaysia that such an argument had been raised by a death row inmate.
Sapuan said he had been arrested for drug trafficking on November 12, 1987 and was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992. His appeal was turned down in 1997 and he had remained on death row ever since.
"I do not know when my death sentence will be carried out. This unexplained delay has caused mental torture and psychological stress.
"It is humiliating and inhumane to live under the shadow of death for 14 years and seven months."
In 1993, the United Kingdom Privy Council ruled that it was "inhumane and degrading" to hang anyone who had spent more than five years on death row.