56-year-old Dutch engineer was first European executed in S'pore in 1994

He was hanged in September 1994

Joshua Lee | March 26, 2018, 02:48 AM

Barely four months after a mini diplomatic crisis erupted as a result of the caning of the American teenager Michael Fay in May 1994, a European man was executed in Changi Prison.

His name was Johannes van Damme and he would become the first European to be hanged in Singapore.

Carried drugs

The crime? Van Damme was carrying 4.32kg of heroin through Singapore, which was bound for Athens.

The 56-year-old Dutch engineer was caught at Changi Airport on Sept. 27, 1991, while he was transiting through Singapore from Thailand and travelling to Athens.

He had been a resident of Nigeria since 1976.

At the belt conveyor, Van Damme's luggage was sniffed out by patrol dogs. The authorities found the heroin stashed inside a false compartment in the luggage.

His version of events

His story was that he was in Bangkok to buy a wedding ring for his daughter. While there, Van Damme was asked by a Nigerian man to help bring a suitcase through Singapore.

According to The New York Times, Nigerian drug cartels tended to control much of the heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia.

Nigerian operators often worked with Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese syndicates to transport the heroin around the region.

In Singapore, the punishment for drug trafficking -- for as little as 15g of heroin -- is the death penalty.

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Failed in appeal

Van Damme tried to appeal against his sentence in November 1993, but was unsuccessful.

Appeals by the Dutch government and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands failed to win him clemency.

Interestingly, the Dutch Foreign Ministry mentioned, during the investigations, that Van Damme had been working with their intelligence agency up to the moment he was arrested in Singapore.

On Sept. 23, 1994, Van Damme was hanged in Changi Prison.

According to his family, they received a blunt telegram from Singapore prison officials the week before the hanging, informing them to visit Van Damme one last time.

"Death sentence passed on Johannes Van Damme will be carried into effect on 23.9.94. Visit him on 20.9.94. Claim body on 23.9.94. Signed Superintendent, Changi Prison, Singapore."

It was Van Damme's case, along with that of Mat Repin, who was executed by hanging on May 13, 1994 at Changi Prison for having smuggled 1kg of cannabis from Malaysia, which prompted science fiction author William Gibson to describe Singapore as Disneyland with the Death Penalty, the title of his first major non-fiction piece first published by Wired magazine in its September/ October 1993 issue.

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