Singapore – Masoud Rahimi Mehrzad’s father received the news he had been dreading in a remote part of Iran.
His son will be hanged in Changi Prison, Singapore.
Reportedly, due to his declining health and with only a week to go before the dawn execution on November 29, he was unable to make the grueling journey to see his son in person for the last time.
Instead, the last contact between father and son came via long-distance phone calls.
Despite facing a final legal challenge, Massoud was hanged on the last Friday in November, more than 14 years after he was first arrested for drug offences.
Masood, 35, became the ninth person to be hanged in Singapore this year.
“With four people executed in November alone, the Singaporean government is relentless in its brutal use of the death penalty,” said Baili Liu, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Anti-death penalty campaign groups believe there are currently around 50 death row inmates in Singapore.
Despite opposition from prominent human rights groups and UN experts, Singapore has claimed the death penalty is an “effective deterrent” to drug traffickers and ensures the city-state becomes “one of the safest places in the world”.
A group of UN experts said in a joint statement last month that Singapore should “move away from reliance on criminal law and adopt a human rights-based approach to drug use and drug use disorders”.
Stories about the plight of death row inmates often come from activists who work tirelessly to fight for the rights of those facing ultimate punishment.
The recent wave of executions has alarmed them.
“This is a nightmare,” said Kokila Annamalai, a prominent anti-death penalty activist with the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC).
Her work brought her into close contact with many death row inmates.
“They are not just people we campaigned for. They are also our friends, they are like our brothers and sisters. This is very difficult for us personally,” Annamalai told Al Jazeera.
“He lost another son and he couldn’t accept it.”
Like almost all Singapore’s death row inmates, Masood was convicted of drug offences.
Born in Singapore to an Iranian father and a Singaporean mother, he spent his childhood in Iran and Dubai.
At the age of 17, he returned to Singapore to complete his compulsory military service, and it was during this period that he was arrested on drug charges.
In May 2010, the 20-year-old drove to meet a Malaysian man at a gas station in central Singapore. Masoud took a package from the man and drove away. He was soon stopped by the police. They searched the package and a number of other bags found inside the vehicle.
In total, police found more than 31 grams of diamorphine, also known as heroin, and 77 grams of methamphetamine.
Massoud was arrested for drug possession and trafficking.
Under Singapore’s strict laws, anyone caught with more than 15 grams of heroin faces the death penalty.
Massoud told police he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. He also accused an illegal money-lending syndicate of planting drugs to frame him.
His defense did not hold up in court and he was sentenced to death in 2015.
Masoud’s sister Mahnaz published an open letter shortly before her brother was hanged last month. She described the pain the death penalty caused her father.
“My father was completely heartbroken and he never recovered. One of my brothers died of appendicitis at the age of 7… losing another son was too much for him to accept,” she wrote.
Masood worked tirelessly to appeal his conviction, but his numerous legal challenges failed, as did his pleas for clemency to Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
Before his execution, Massoud’s sister told how her brother helped other inmates in their legal battles on death row.
“He was very committed to helping them find peace,” Mahnaz said.
“He felt a responsibility to fight for his own life and the lives of others, and he wanted everyone on death row to feel the same drive to support each other,” she said.
‘People are starting to care deeply’
In October, Masood was one of 13 death row inmates who won a lawsuit against the Singapore Prison Service and the Attorney-General’s Chambers over their alleged illegal disclosure and solicitation of prisoners’ private letters.
The court also held that the prisoner’s right to confidentiality was violated.
Massoud will also represent 31 prisoners in a constitutional challenge to a new law on post-appeal procedures in death penalty cases. A hearing on the legal challenge is still scheduled for late January 2025, but now it’s too late for Massoud.
Singapore’s Central Narcotics Enforcement Agency said the fact that Masood’s execution took place ahead of an upcoming High Court hearing “has no bearing on his conviction or sentence”.
The number of executions in Southeast Asia’s financial hub has increased in recent years after a two-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to news reports, 25 prisoners have been executed in Singapore since 2022, with authorities showing few signs of relaxing their approach to the death penalty for drug traffickers.
Anti-death penalty activists in the city-state continue to express anger at the government’s actions, using social media to amplify the personal stories of death row inmates.
However, they have started to receive “rectification orders” from government authorities under Singapore’s controversial fake news law.
Annamalai’s TJC organization has been targeted by the Prevention of Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) law for several posts related to death row cases.
The campaign group has been instructed to attach a “correction notice” to its original post and share an online link to a government website for further clarification.
“POFMA always tells the story of a prisoner about to be executed,” Annamalai said.
Describing the stories of these individual prisoners as “the most powerful,” Annamalai said the group was specifically targeted because “people read these stories and start to care deeply and want action.” .
‘Trying to silence us’
Human rights groups have slammed authorities for recent targeting of activist groups.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the continued climate of intimidation and fear created by the authorities around anti-death penalty activism in Singapore and demand an immediate end to the harassment of activists,” seven anti-death penalty groups said in a joint statement in October.
Elizabeth Wood, chief executive of the Melbourne-based Death Penalty Justice Project, one of seven signatories of the letter, said those fighting to end executions were seen as “glorifying” drug dealers.
“They announced they were going to have a day of remembrance for drug victims. It’s another way of accusing activists of glorifying drug dealers and trying to humanize drug dealers,” Wood said.
“The Singaporean government should not use its repressive and overbroad laws to try to silence anti-death penalty activists,” said Liu of Human Rights Watch.
Singapore’s Home Ministry declined Al Jazeera’s request for an interview.
The Home Office said in a recent statement that it “will not target, silence and harass organizations and individuals simply for speaking out against the death penalty”.
TJC’s Annamalai said she would continue to act aggressively despite facing a POFMA correction order for postings on her personal Facebook page.
Despite the risk of fines and even jail time, Annamalai says she won’t change her ways.
“They are actively and desperately trying to silence us, but they will not succeed,” she added.
