Singapore authorities announced today that they have executed by hanging a 46-year-old man who had been sentenced to death for trafficking a kilogram of cannabis, defying calls from abroad to review the case and abolish the death penalty in the city-state.

The sentence of Tagaratzu Supia, 46, a Singaporean national, “was carried out today at Chagi Prison,” a Singaporean prison service spokesman told AFP.

Tagaraju Supia was executed despite the appeal which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights addressed yesterday Tuesday to the Singaporean authorities to “urgently review” the decision to hang him.

A day earlier the British billionaire Richard Bransona member of the World Commission on the Fight against Drugs, also appealed to the city-state not to execute the 46-year-old, judging, like human rights defenders and family members of the death row inmate, that he had no real involvement in drug trafficking for which he was convicted and reporting loopholes in the case.

Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs, however, rejected Mr Branson’s plea and assessments on Tuesday, accusing him of showing a complete “lack of respect for judges” and “the criminal justice system” of the country.

Tagaratzu Supia was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2018 for his alleged involvement in the smuggling of 1.01kg of cannabis, twice the amount punishable by death in Singapore, a country with one of the world’s harshest penalties in terms of it’s about drugs.