Singapore says hangman not sacked
Monday Nov 28 21:22 AEDT
Singapore's prison authorities have denied the city-state's chief
executioner Darshan Singh has been sacked.
Singh, 74, has hanged more than 800 prisoners in a career spanning
45 years, and he had been expected to be the executioner of
Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van on Friday.
"Darshan Singh has not been sacked and continues to be a contract
officer engaged by the prisons department," a spokesman for the
prisons department said on Monday.
"There is no change to his status," added the spokesman, but he
would not confirm whether Singh would be the executioner in
Nguyen's case.
Nguyen, 25, faces the gallows at dawn local time after all appeals
for clemency have been rejected by the government.
Reports of Singh's dismissal appeared on Sunday in an Australian
article that speculated a replacement would be flown in from
Malaysia.
Singh appeared to substantiate the story later on Sunday when he
was quoted as saying: "They called me a few days ago and said I
don't have to hang Nguyen and that I don't have to work any
more".
The reported reason for the sacking was Singh's comments in an
interview that appeared in an Australian press report earlier this
month.
An Australian sheetmetal worker on Monday reportedly
offered his services to Singapore to replace Singh as
hangman.
Keith Sauerwald, 65, from Darwin in the Northern Territory, told
Agence France-Presse he had written to the Singapore High
Commission in Canberra to request the job.
"Apparently not too many people want the job and somebody has to do
the job, and to do the job I think you have to have a rather large
dislike for drug addicts," Sauerwald was quoted as saying.
"I have a great dislike for druggos (drug addicts)," he reportedly
said.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=74757
Ah. wth is going on.. 
