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Monday 4 April 2011

Death row Malaysian to know his fate today

The Star 

KUALA LUMPUR: Sabah-born Yong Vui Kong, who is on death row for a drug offence in Singapore, will know his fate Monday.

The Singaporean Court of Appeal will convene at 10am to decide on Yong's appeal against his High Court judgment.

Yong had filed the application seeking the Court of Appeal to reverse the High Court's decision after a comment by the republic's Law Minister K. Shanmugam had irreversibly tainted his clemency petition and on the issue of the president's power in granting clemency.

Shanmugam had made a statement last May that Yong could not be pardoned, even before the 23-year-old could make his clemency plea to Singapore President S.R. Nathan.

Yong was caught with heroin in June 2007 when he was 18, a crime that warrants the mandatory death sentence.

Although trial judge Justice Choo Han Teck had asked the prosecution to consider reducing the charge against him because of his age, it declined to do so. Yong was given the death sentence in January 2009.

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