A 39-year-old Singaporean man was executed on Aug. 3, 2023, for possessing not less than 54.04g of diamorphine, or pure "heroin", for trafficking.

The Misuse of Drugs Act provides for the death penalty if the amount of diamorphine trafficked is more than 15g.

In their statement on Aug. 3, Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) said Shalleh was accorded full due process under the law and was represented by legal counsel throughout the process.

Happened in 2016

According to court documents, Mohamed Shalleh Bin Adul Latiff claimed trial for his trafficking charge.

The trial revealed that Shalleh was found with the drugs on Aug. 11, 2016 afternoon.

On that day, Shalleh drove a rental vehicle to Boon Teck Road, where CNB officers were conducting an operation.

He met a Malaysian man, Khairul Nizam bin Ramthan, who had arrived earlier in a Malaysian-registered vehicle.

Khairul alighted his vehicle and retrieved something from his boot before boarding the front passenger side of Shalleh's vehicle.

Khairul received S$7,000 from Shalleh before returning to his own vehicle.

They both drove off after.

Arrested on the same day

CNB officers followed their vehicles.

They arrested Shalleh at about 3:30pm on Aug. 11, 2016, after he stopped his vehicle at Mei Ling Street.

On the floorboard of the vehicle's front passenger seat, they found one orange plastic bag and three separate zip-lock bags containing one palm-sized bundle wrapped in brown paper each.

The three bundles contained not less than 1,360.9g of powdery substance that was analysed to contain 54.04g of diamorphine.

Claimed he had no knowledge of drugs

During the trial, Shalleh did not dispute that he possessed the three bundles, nor did he dispute the statutory presumption that the drugs were possessed for trafficking as the amount seized was above the 2g threshold for diamorphine.

However, his defence was that he did not know that the three bundles contained drugs but thought they contained contraband cigarettes instead.

He claimed that his creditor, who instructed him to deliver the bundles in exchange for reducing his debt, told him the bundles contained two and a half cartons of contraband cigarettes.

He also claimed that he trusted the creditor enough to not check the contents of the bundles.

Lastly, he claimed that he did not see the bundles' contents as they were placed within the orange plastic bag and that it was firmly tied up.

Trial judge rejected claims

The trial judge rejected Shalleh's claims of not knowing that the bundles contained drugs.

While she noted that Shalleh and the creditor were not strangers, they were not close friends either, which Shalleh agreed with during cross-examination.

She added that Shalleh did not know the creditor's basic details, such as his actual name or address.

Thus, the trial judge believed there was no basis for Shalleh to trust his creditor's claims that the bundles contained contraband cigarettes and to not check their contents.

She also rejected Shalleh's claim that he did not see what was in the bundles.

She said Shalleh's claim contradicted a CNB officer's evidence, who said he found the three bundles beside the orange plastic bag on the floorboard.

The trial judge believed Shalleh would have seen the exposed bundles and be suspicious that they contained something else besides cartons of cigarettes because of their roundish irregular shapes.

Convicted and sentenced to death

Ultimately, the trial judge found that Shalleh did not successfully disprove that he knew of the drugs and convicted him accordingly.

While Shalleh was found to be a courier in the transaction, he did not receive a certificate of substantive assistance from the authorities.

He was thus sentenced to the mandatory death penalty in 2019.

Appealed against conviction and sentence

Shalleh appealed against his conviction and sentence in 2022.

His defence counsels for the appeal conjectured that the three bundles could have fallen out of the orange plastic bag.

However, this contradicted Shalleh's earlier claim that the bag was firmly tied.

The Court of Appeal agreed with the trial judge's findings that Shalleh saw the bundles.

The Court also thought that Shalleh was a smoker and would thus know that whatever his creditor told him about the bundles' contents was "manifestly unreliable" after seeing the bundles' shapes.

They also agreed that Shalleh had no basis to trust his creditor.

The Court of Appeal dismissed Shalleh's appeal on Feb. 28, 2022.

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