Nguyen Tuong Van, 23, a sales executive from Melbourne,...

Nguyen Tuong Van, 23, a sales executive from Melbourne, Australia, was sentenced to death after the Singapore High Court found him guilty of smuggling almost 400 grams of heroin. "The sentence of this court is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison, then to a place of execution where you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead," High Court Judge Kan Ting Chiu said. Nguyen's Australian lawyer Lex Lasry said he would appeal the sentence. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer made a personal plea for Nguyen to be spared the death penalty and the federal government planned to keep up pressure on Singapore. "The Australian government has a long-standing position of opposition to the death penalty and if Mr Nguyen's sentence is confirmed on appeal we would seek clemency," a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokeswoman said. An appeal for clemency could be made to the president of Singapore. If his appeal was to fail, Nguyen would be the first Australian executed for drug trafficking since 1986, when two Australians were hanged in Malaysia. Singapore has a history of ignoring leniency pleas from abroad. In August 1994, Dutchman Johannes Van Damme became the first Westerner to hang for drug offences in Singapore - despite pleas for clemency from the Dutch government and the Netherlands' Queen Beatrix. Like Van Damme, Nguyen was arrested in transit through Singapore's Changi airport, in December 2002. During his trial, the Singapore court was told Nguyen told police he had agreed to smuggle the drugs from Cambodia to Australia to pay off a massive debt owed by his twin brother. He was attempting to switch planes in Singapore when he was caught at the boarding gate with heroin taped to his lower back and in his backpack during a routine security check.