Malaysian death row inmates Datchinamurthy Kataiah, Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, and Saminathan Selvaraju are scheduled to have their appeals heard this Friday for alleged drug trafficking.

According to Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network’s Dobby Chew, the convicted Malaysians were appealing their conviction because their private correspondence with their counsel had been repeatedly copied and forwarded to the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) without their knowledge or consent.

"This correspondence includes confidential contacts with lawyers in certain instances. The state agency that had prosecuted these inmates was the AGC.”

Having said that, another Malaysian, Gobi Avedian was also convicted of drug offenses but was not handed the death sentence and will also be appealing his case. He is now facing a 15-year jail sentence and 10 strokes of the cane, with the sentence backdated to the date of his remand.

Initially, Datchinamurthy was scheduled to be executed last year. However, he managed to obtain a stay of execution from the Singapore High Court at the 11th hour pending the outcome of his legal action against the Singaporean government for his death sentence.

He was found guilty of trafficking 44.96g of diamorphine into Singapore in 2011 and was sentenced to the death penalty in 2015.

Pannir is in the next row as he was charged in Singapore for trafficking heroin in 2017, while Saminathan was charged for trafficking diamorphine with two others in 2013.

According to Chew, the fourth Malaysian, Gobi was detained on Dec 11, 2014, at the Woodlands Checkpoint and was subsequently handed a capital charge of importing 40.22g of heroin. However, in 2017, a High Court judge reduced the charges against Gobi from importing heroin to attempted drug importation and acquitted him of the capital charge.

More updates to follow.

Image Credit / Source: Wikipedia, FMT