Once a Jolly Hangman (10 page)

The questioning began. 'What's this on your back?' 'Heroin'. 'What's inside the haversack?' Nguyen meekly took out a second packet. 'What is this?' 'Heroin'. The baby-faced trafficker was in possession of just under 400 grams of the stuff - enough to hang him 26 times. Under Singapore law anyone caught with more than 15 grams of heroin faces a mandatory death penalty. The street value of 400 grams would have netted several million dollars on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. At the time of Nguyen's arrest a heavily diluted gram would fetch A$300 to A$400 from desperate men and women craving another fix. Drug addiction had long become a major social scourge in Australia especially Melbourne and Sydney - and an easy money-maker for
some. Syndicate bosses, mostly Vietnamese, were becoming multi
millionaires almost overnight. It was a business many wanted to get
into. At the same time addicts and their families were suffering from its cruel destructive influence. Turf wars broke out regularly between the drug gangs creating yet more havoc for everyone to fear and bear.

I watched Nguyen's demise unfold in the High Court and the day the verdict was announced: death by hanging. His trial began in early 2004. The evidence was clear and damning. In statements read to the court, Nguyen claimed he was just a drug mule, involved in a one- off attempt to make some quick money. He told investigators he and twin brother Khoa had serious financial problems. Khoa in particular, he said, was in deep with a Melbourne loan shark. He would receive around $40,000 for the drug run and would settle his brother's debts of $12,000. It was to be Khoa's Christmas present, he told his interrogators, hoping it would arouse some emotion and sympathy for his plight. The rest would get him out of trouble.

As she busied herself in her kitchen after returning from work his mother, Kim Nguyen, was soon to learn all about the purpose of the 'holiday' trip to Cambodia. The Australian Federal Police had received a phone call from Singapore. Officers raided the bewildered woman's home just before midnight. He had been arrested at Changi airport for drug trafficking. It was serious, they told her. Her son was facing the death penalty. They also had a warrant to search his bedroom and the rest of the house.

I'd moved to Singapore from the United States about the same time of his arrest and I kept track of the case and pending trial. Australia's biggest magazine, Woman's Day, commissioned me to write a special feature about the many Australian citizens banged up in prisons across Asia - Vietnam, Hong Kong, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Brunei and Indonesia - serving long sentences or awaiting execution. Schapelle Corby, an Australian beauty with a model's figure, had just been arrested in Bali for trafficking 4.2 kilograms of marijuana into Bali and Nguyen's appeal was to be heard twelve days later. Both were wondering whether they would live or die. He was heading for the gallows. She was supposed to die in front of a firing squad. There were scores of their fellow citizens rotting away in filthy prisons, some also fighting for their lives or begging for leniency, some forgotten and some wishing they had never been born. But from my inquiries, the threat of being strung up, shot or given impossibly long prison sentences in the most sordid
conditions didn't seem to be any kind of deterrent for them. They were mostly fools, too naive for their own good, putting their lives on the line at the most ridiculous odds.

Nguyen was an unknown quantity to me at that time. He was facing the mandatory death penalty for his crime. Would it be another controversial case that would reverberate across Australia and perhaps the world and stir anti-death penalty campaigners into action again? Because of its death penalty laws, eyes are often focused on Singapore whenever news that they are about to hang someone gets out, especially Westerners. To get a better picture of some of these characters, I boned up on the trial reports and executions of Australians Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers who were hanged in Malaysia 1986 for trafficking 141.9 grams of heroin. Next was British-born Michael McAuliffe, a barman from Sydney. He was executed in Malaysia in June
1993 after languishing for eight years on death row while going through a tortuous appeals process. McAuliffe was arrested at Penang International airport with a large stash of heroin packed into condoms in his money belt. While looking into these old and new cases, I met up with an AFP narcotics agent based in Singapore. 'Why on earth do they take such risks?', I asked somewhat naively. 'If you find out, let me know', he replied dryly.

If Nguyen was telling the truth that this was his first venture in drug smuggling, just another foolish mule or a partner with his brother Khoa trying to make the big time as syndicate bosses, news of his 'financial problems' quickly got around Melbourne's murky haunts of the drug kingpins. He was soon propositioned by two mystery men, so he told Singapore's Central Narcotics Bureau investigators. One was named Tan, he said. The other was named Sun. Tan? Sun? Sun Tan, I mused. A joke? Not their real names surely although they are typically Chinese. Maybe they had a sense of humour? Or maybe it was Nguyen's joke? Perhaps he made them up on the spur of the moment as part of his cover story when he was caught. If he were telling the truth they would not use their real names anyway. The CNB brushed the information aside as useless, the usual disinformation. Nguyen's defence lawyers claimed at the trial he had given them helpful leads to track down the Melbourne syndicate and the Cambodia connection. He deserved a break. But in court a CNB agent said he had only wasted their time

with false leads. According to Nguyen the plan was for him to transport a 'package' from Phnom Penh to Melbourne or Sydney via Singapore. He said he was given several thousand dollars to cover the air fares and accommodation. When Nguyen arrived in Phnom Penh he was met by members of a drug syndicate. He described a dramatic cat-and-mouse game giving last minute instructions via mobile phones, moving from one meeting point to another to make sure he was not being tailed by narcotics agents until they were satisfied Nguyen was 'clean. He was taken to a secret hideout, a backstreet garage, shown how to crush heroin crystals and tape the two packets he divided it into on his back. He then made a first-ever trip to his ancestral homeland, Vietnam, for some sightseeing in Ho Chi Minh City. He also sought the company of prostitutes but during his interrogation Nguyen claimed he did not have sex with them. Even though he knew then he would never see his girlfriend in Melbourne again, he was gentlemanly enough not to reveal such an indiscretion.

Back in Phnom Penh several days later he met up with his contacts again. He was late for the appointment but his explanation was accepted. The heroin was ready to be crushed and packed. He went back to his hotel and prepared for the trip home. The journey would take him once more to Singapore. He boarded Silk Air flight MI622 and sat ready for take-off. The arrangement back in Australia was that a stranger would approach him, start a conversation and then suddenly say: 'I like basketball'. The deal would be done. Nguyen would get his money. Some of it would go to his brother. Their problems would be solved. That was his story. It seemed all too simple. Halfway into the journey, however, Nguyen's nerves were getting the better of him. He fidgeted. He had difficulty breathing. One of the tapes binding the heroin packets had become loose and uncomfortable slipping gradually down his back. He headed for the toilet to make some adjustments but the packet fell into the aisle as he got out of his seat. Inside the
toilet he tidied himself, then returned and slipped the troublesome packet into the haversack in the compartment above his head. There was nothing more the judge needed to hear. He was caught red-handed. The traditional black cap was placed on the judge's head. Nguyen was ordered to stand. "The sentence of this court upon you is that you will
be taken from this place to a lawful prison to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul'. Then he was bundled down the steps to a holding cell below the courthouse to await a police vehicle to take him back to Changi Prison. A new cell was being prepared for him. He would now be on death row.

Seven months later on 30 October 2004 his appeal against the death penalty began. As I arrived by taxi to report the proceedings, I could see wide-berth boats full of tourists, relaxing happily in the warm sunshine as they floated by. Inside the grim, packed courtroom three appeals judges in traditional robes were about to issue their decision in a terse, 90-second statement. I was sitting next to his mother in the public gallery. Kim Nguyen, hands clasped throughout the hearing, was quietly praying, while staring down at her son, a lone, tiny figure in the dock, with two guards on each side armed with guns. Nguyen looked intently at the judges trying to read their faces as they came and went and returned again to announce the verdict. He occasionally turned his head to make eye contact with his terrified and tearful mother. When the verdict was announced and the judges quickly filed out of the courtroom, Mrs Nguyen buried her face in her hands and sobbed as she took in what it meant. A young lady from the Australian High Commission tried to comfort her. He had just lost another battle for his life. His only hope was the President. But his appeal for clemency was denied. The appeal was based on various technical grounds: Nguyen was not given access to a lawyer to represent him while he was being interrogated. His lawyers also argued that the mandatory death penalty in Singapore was contrary to international law. That was dismissed because Singapore had not signed any international agreement on this issue. It was a foregone conclusion.

Even then, Nguyen's case received scant coverage in the Australian media. After all, to the majority white population he was just another Vietnamese immigrant bringing deadly drugs into his adopted country. However, one Australian internet blogger and controversial anti-prohibition campaigner, the late Gary Meyerhoff, could not contain his rage. 'In stark contrast to events in 1986 [when Barlow and Chambers were executed]', Meyerhoff wrote, 'Van Tuong Nguyen has been virtually ignored by the Australian Government and the media'. Meyerhoff went on:

Nguyen Tuong Van is definitely not a household name. Why is the media ignoring him? Is it because they can't pronounce his name or is the real reason a little more insidious than that? Schapelle Corby doesn't exactly roll off the tongue and she has been turned into a media celebrity, not to mention the millionaire Aussie yachtsman Chris Packer, recently released from an Indonesian jail after serving three months for failing to declare firearms. With regards to media reporting, there is obviously some sort of double standard at play. Brian Chambers, Kevin Barlow, Chris Packer and Schapelle Corby all have one thing in common. They are all white Australians. Nguyen's crime is that he is an Australian of Vietnamese origin. Australia's predominantly white journalists
(and our white Prime Minister) have written him off as just another Viet boy dealing smack.

Meyerhoff's barbs may have pricked a few sensitive spots and attitudes began to change a little when photos of his distraught mother outside the old Supreme Court building went out on the wires after his appeal was dismissed. But the name Schapelle Corby was still hogging the headlines. Not surprising, either. With sexy photographs of her on the covers, Woman's Day and New Idea were flying off the shelves selling more copies than Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman put together! Nguyen Van Tuong didn't stand a chance of getting his voice heard or his photograph appearing anywhere. He was hardly on anyone's radar screen.

But all that changed when I obtained a surprise and sensational interview with the man who was to hang him. He was about to become another household name and enter the consciences of all Australians for better or worse. It was the kind of revelation that so scared the British establishment when it was fighting to retain this barbaric, medieval form of punishment. Now Singapore's establishment was about to get the same kind of unwanted attention. Nguyen was the first Australian citizen ever to be sentenced to death in Singapore and the prospect of his execution was gradually awakening angry human rights activists again down under and around the world. Australia had long ago abolished the death penalty as cruel and inhumane. Back home, Nguyen would most likely have got a prison sentence of 24 years with a third off for good behaviour. At 25, he would have had time to reshape his life, learned his lesson and become a good Aussie. But such thinking in Singapore, unless otherwise influenced, is not part of their thought
process despite Changi Prisons proud motto: 'Captains of Lives: Rehab, Renew, Restart'. These words are even cynically - and perhaps deliberate and mockingly so - printed at the bottom of each letter sent to families from the prison governor announcing the day their loved one will be put to death. If not intentional, the meaning of hypocrisy must have been lost in translation from Mandarin to English.

As expected, my interview with the hangman added fuel to the growing furore as the execution day loomed nearer. When it hit the front pages Joseph Koh, Singapore's then High Commissioner in Canberra, was on the phone to the Foreign Affairs Minister with accounts of the potentially damaging interview he had just read with horror and dismay. In Australia I was told Foreign Minister Alexander Downer almost had an apoplexy over Darshan Singh's grisly revelations. In a statement he said he was 'outraged' over his comments and said the hangman 'should get a decent job'. Of course, it had put Downer firmly in the hot seat and under pressure by many of his emotional fellow citizens horrified at what was about to happen and wanting him to do something more positive to help save Nguyen's life. Many Aussies demanded he get tough with obstinate Singapore with an economic boycott and diplomatic reprisals.