Singapore has the highest execution rate in the world...

Singapore has the highest execution rate in the world relative to its population, outstripping China, Saudi Arabia and Sierra Leone, Amnesty International said in a report. More than 400 prisoners have been hanged since 1991 in the Southeast Asian city-state of 4 million people, the organisation said in a report on Singapore entitled 'A Hidden Toll of Executions.' Most executions were for drug offences while some were for murder and firearms offences, all of which carry mandatory death sentences in Singapore, the report said. Those executed overwhelmingly came from disadvantaged groups: migrant workers, drug addicts, the poor or the uneducated, Amnesty said. It cited the case of Rozman Jusoh, a 24-year-old Malaysian laborer who was hanged for drug trafficking in 1996, despite having below normal intelligence with a reported IQ of 74. Singapore drug laws are among the world's toughest. Anyone caught with more than half an ounce of heroin or more than 17 ounces of marijuana is presumed to be trafficking and faces a mandatory death sentence. Singapore had the highest per-capita execution rate between 1994 and 1999, with about 13.6 executions for every million people, according to the latest UN report on capital punishment. Amnesty alleged that Singapore denied defendants the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by writing laws ordering that they be presumed guilty of trafficking based on the amount of drugs found. The group also accused the government of veiling its use of the death penalty by failing to egularly publish statistics about death sentences or executions. The number of prisoners currently on Singapore's death row isn't known, it added.