Execution of Angel Mou Pui Peng

Born in Macau in 1969, Mou Pui Peng (who was later nicknamed "Angel") moved to British Hong Kong when she was 2 years old with her mother and younger sister. After dropping out of high school, Mou found various employment as a factory worker and a sales girl, and was working as a cashier the time of her arrest. ==Background==

In the summer of 1991, Mou asked her 19-year-old sister Mei Mei if she would be willing to carry "something" from Thailand to Taiwan, hidden inside a pair of platform shoes. Ah Hung assured them that many people smuggled things by airplane each year, that everything would work out fine and that even if they were caught all they risked was a few years in prison. On 24 August 1991, after a final meeting with Peter at a restaurant in Jordan district, Mou and her sister caught a China Airlines flight to Bangkok. Ah Hung was waiting for them when they landed, and he then treated the sisters to a few days of sightseeing and shopping. After learning of Mou's arrest, Ah Hung re-routed Mei Mei's flight to Zürich via Seoul (without informing her of what happened to Angel). Mei Mei only learned of her sister's fate when she arrived back in Hong Kong from Holland and was met at Kai Tak airport by narcotics bureau detectives from the Royal Hong Kong Police. ==Arrest at Changi Airport==

Mou arrived at Changi Airport (to catch an onward flight to Zürich) at around midday on 29 August 1991, where her strange behaviour drew the scrutiny of Customs officer Suriati Mohamed, who was standing less than 20 meters away from Mou at the customs counter green lane. At baggage conveyor belt number 17 on the West wing of Terminal 1, Mou picked up her duffel bag but then hesitated and dropped it, allowing the bag to go around another time before picking it up. After Mou put her bag on a luggage trolley and started wheeling it towards the exit of the Arrivals hall, she was stopped by customs officers Brahim and Mohamed, who asked Mou to open her bag for an inspection. Her nervous demeanour raised the suspicion of the officials, and after customs officer Mohamed inspected the bag she realized she could not run her hands down to the very bottom of its inside. The plastic packaging of the larger compressed bricks were stamped with the "Double UO Globe" logo, which was known as a trademark of the Khun Sa drug trafficking organization. Mou was then arrested and handed over to the Central Narcotics Bureau, led by officer Ong Peng Beng. When interrogated by officers at the scene about the narcotics discovered in her luggage, Mou mostly remained silent. However, she did state that the bag was given to her by someone else and she did not know what was inside. Mou was searched and found to have a large amount of cash in various currencies, amounting to $US3,000, HK$5,720, and S$1,055. She was then escorted to Tan Tock Seng Hospital for a medical check up, and afterwards gave a recorded statement to CNB officer Ong via a Cantonese interpreter at about 4:30pm. In her statement, Mou claimed that she paid for the bag at a roadside market in Bangkok and that it was later delivered to her hotel room by the same salesgirl she bought it off, who then helped Mou pack her things into the new bag. ==Trial==

, which was covered by a thin lining of cloth. This cloth lining was wrapped around the blocks of heroin underneath, and the bottom of the lining was attached to the bottom of the duffle bag itself with a layer of glue. after which she was instructed by her pimp, a man named "Ah Hung", to visit Singapore to service a client. She claimed Ah Hung bought her a new canvas bag as a gift from a Bangkok market stall, then packed the bag without her knowledge while she was taking a bath in her hotel room, and he also carried the bag and checked it in for her at Don Mueang International Airport. Although Ah Hung was supposed to travel with her, she claimed an urgent matter arose in Bangkok he needed to attend to and he promised to catch a later flight then meet up with her in Singapore. Mou asserted that she had no knowledge of the drugs in her bag before she set off for Singapore. Defence lawyers also stated that the man known as Ah Hung had since been arrested by police in Hong Kong for narcotic offences and that his case was pending trial, a fact they asserted backed up Mou's testimony.{{cite news|url=https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/lhwb19930311-1.2.6.10|title=澳门女郎运毒判死刑 When challenged by Public Prosecutor Ismail Hamid as to why she had failed to mention any of these facts in her initial statement after her arrest, Mou claimed that she did but the recording officer left all those details out for some unknown reason, adding that she wished to disavow the contents of that statement. Mou further claimed that she only realised her statement was seriously lacking in details after it was read out in court, and she would have given a more detailed statement to the authorities before the trial commenced if she had known. In response to furter questioning about a handwritten note found in her possession which included the English words "SQ 46", "SQ28", "SWISS ZURICH", "CENTRAIR", "EUROPEAN TRAIN", "AMSTERDAM", Mou testified that a man named "Hor Fei" had telephoned the Bangkok hotel room while Ah Hung was away. After informing him that Ah Hung was not available he asked her to take a message, and she had scribbled down the words without understanding their meaning. Mou also claimed she was looking around frequently in the arrivals hall of Changi Airport out of curiosity as she had never been in Singapore before, and denied being stopped by the customs officers, insisting that she had voluntarily walked up to the customs desk to offer her bag for inspection. ==Verdict==

from. Mou had also signed the initial statement after reading it and being offered the chance to make any alterations, which led the court to disregard her allegation it was not recorded correctly. Regarding Mou's claim to have never heard the contents of the initial statement before, the judge asserted that she would have been served a copy of it in remand prison during pre-trial disclosure of evidence, and it was unbelievable she would not have studied it in detail with her defence lawyers well before the beginning of her trial. Mou remained expressionless when the death sentence was read out and she was escorted from the court by two prison guards, ==Appeals==

On 11 July 1994, Mou's appeal against her death sentence was rejected by Singapore's Court of Criminal Appeal. Although customs officer Suriarti had testified at the original trial that Mou had wheeled her trolley between herself and the green lane counter where customs officer Rosli was standing, she subsequently corrected herself and stated that Mou was in fact on her right hand side when she ordered her to stop, and thus was heading towards the Arrivals hall exit itself. This implied that had she not stopped Mou, she would have walked straight past the officers, and therefore Mou did not voluntarily approach the officers and offer her bag to be checked. The appeal court justified the original trial judge accepting officer Suriarti's evidence, as it was backed up by officer Rosli's testimony and was in any case immaterial to Mou's ultimate conviction. ==Conviction of "Ah Hung" in Hong Kong==

On 29 November 1993, the man known as "Ah Hung" pled guilty in the Supreme Court of Hong Kong to a charge of assisting people in Hong Kong to commit an offence outside the territory (Section 40 of the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance), the first conviction of its kind for that offence in Hong Kong legal history. Although Deputy Judge Wong queried the consequences of Ah Hung's actions and highlighted the fact that Mou was facing the death penalty in Singapore as a result, defence lawyer Gary Plowman Q.C. asserted the judge could not penalize Ah Hung for crimes committed outside the jurisdiction, but only for the preparatory acts committed in the territory of Hong Kong. Ah Hung, whose legal fees during his trial were estimated at over HK$1.5 million, was later sentenced to years in prison. At the time of his arrest, Ah Hung was carrying a passport issued by Malaysia bearing the name of 'Sia Khim Meng' and claimed to be a 29-year-old furniture factory owner residing in Thailand. Mei Mei had previously asserted in statements made to Hong Kong police detectives that her and Mou had thought the bags contained stolen Rolex watches, and had been tricked into carrying narcotics. Ah Hung was eventually released from prison on 10 October 1994 and then deported to China. ==Execution==

In early December 1994, after a final plea for clemency was rejected by President of Singapore Ong Teng Cheong and with all legal processes for appeal exhausted, a death warrant was finalized and sent to Mou's family in Hong Kong. They were notified via telegram from the superintendent of Changi Prison that the execution would take place a week later on 23 December 1994. Mou was scheduled to be executed alongside Singaporean drug offenders Leong Wing Kong and Lim Choon Chye, however her lawyers filed an application for a stay of execution so her family could visit her in prison and celebrate Christmas with her one final time before she could be put to death The request was granted on 22 December 1994 by President Ong Teng Cheong, who had earlier rejected Mou's plea for clemency two weeks prior to the original date of her execution. Upon learning Mou's family had difficulty raising money for the journey to Singapore, the manager of Hinrichs Travel Services offered two return tickets free of charge, while The Indian Resources Group donated HK$10,000 towards the total cost. On 30 December 1994, Mou's mother received another telegram in Hong Kong from the authorities in Singapore, informing her that Mou's execution would take place the following week. The telegram also said the family would be allowed to visit her three days before the scheduled hanging and could claim Mou's body after the death sentence had been carried out. Amnesty International, who had earlier organized a clemency campaign on Mou's behalf, Mou was visited on death row by her lawyer Peter Yap the day before she was brought to the gallows, who described her as being calm, emotionally stable and spiritually prepared for her impending execution. Shortly before dawn on the morning of 6 January 1995, after a two-week stay of execution and rescheduling of her death sentence, 25-year-old Angel Mou Pui Peng was hanged at Changi Prison. A few hours after her execution, Mou was cremated following a funeral service attended by her sister Mei Mei and their father. ==International reaction==

in Santo Antonio, Macau Mou's case was given wide coverage by the Portuguese media, with frequent daily updates on both television and radio in the lead up to her execution. Many appeals were previously made by politicians worldwide for the commutation of Mou's death sentence, including a landmark intervention by President of Portugal Mário Soares, along with similar diplomatic efforts from the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel Barroso In an effort to gain clemency, Portugal's ambassador to Singapore, Sebastiao De Castello Branco, had previously described Mou as being "so poorly educated that she could not grasp the seriousness of the crime of drug smuggling". == See also ==