SINGAPORE (AFP) – Singapore on Wednesday hung a Bangladeshi man for murder, police said, in the first execution this year in the city-state.

“The capital sentence of death imposed on Ahmed Salim was carried out on 28 February 2024,” the Singapore Police Force said in a statement.

The 35-year-old was sentenced to death in December 2020 for the murder of his former fiancee in Singapore, the SPF said.

He “was accorded full due process under the law, and had access to legal counsel throughout the process”, it added.

Ahmed’s appeals before the Court of Appeal and petition for clemency to Singapore’s president were dismissed, according to the police.

It was the first judicial execution in Singapore this year, local anti-death-penalty group Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) said.

Before that, at least 16 people were hanged after Singapore resumed executions in 2022, all convicted on drug trafficking charges.

There had been a two-year pause during the Covid-19 pandemic.

TJC said in a statement that Ahmed’s victim was an Indonesian domestic helper named Yati.

“The state’s psychiatric expert found that Ahmed was struggling with an adjustment disorder when he killed Yati,” TJC said.

The disorder “involves excessive and intense reactions and behaviour changes related to a stressful event, overwhelming the person’s ability to cope”, it said.

TJC also said both the prosecution and defence “agreed he (Ahmed) had an ‘abnormality of mind’ but the court ruled that it was not sufficient to make out a defence of diminished responsibility”.

The United Nations, rights groups and other opponents of capital punishment say it has no proven deterrent effect and have called for it to be discontinued.

Singaporean officials insist it has helped make the country one of Asia’s safest.

“Capital punishment is used only for the most serious crimes in Singapore that cause grave harm to the victim, or to society,” the SPF said in its statement.