Abdul Rahim bin Shapiee (c.1977 – 5 August 2022) was a Singaporean Uber driver who faced capital punishment in Singapore for trafficking of 41.24g of heroin.
[4] The joint trial of Abdul Rahim Shapiee and Ong Seow Ping lasted between 28 September 2017 and 15 March 2018 at the High Court.
[5][6] Besides, Abdul Rahim only earned a monthly income of less than S$2,000 through his driver job, and roughly $800 a week working for his father's business.
[10] In August 2021, an appeal was made by 17 Malay death row inmates, including Abdul Rahim himself, against their respective sentences on basis of alleged racial discrimination.
Abdul Rahim and the 16 other prisoners thus submitted that the prosecution of suspects over capital cases were laced with racial discrimination and differential treatment based on the alleged "over-representation" of minorities (especially the Malays) on Singapore's death row.
[23] On 3 August 2022, two days before he was set to hang, Abdul Rahim became one of the 24 death row prisoners to file a lawsuit against the Attorney-General of Singapore, and they brought forward claims that there were miscarriages of justice in their cases as they were denied their access to legal counsel and had their preparations of appeal hindered, which was influenced by the recent cases of inmates having to argue in their appeals without any lawyers to represent them.
They claimed their access to counsel was obstructed due to the strict court orders and penalties issued against any lawyers who made appeals without merit or abused the court process, which led to a supposed climate of fear among lawyers and made them opt to not represent the inmates facing imminent execution.
[28][29] Besides the lawsuit, Abdul Rahim's sister Norhafizah filed a complaint to the courts that the prison authorities had not carried out instructions from her brother who, on 25 July 2022, asked for the necessary documents to file an appeal to delay his hanging and review his case, which she claimed had allegedly led to the legal application being blocked and not being heard earlier before the scheduled execution.
[36][37] In the year 2022 itself, a total of eleven executions, including Abdul Rahim's, had been officially carried out in Singapore, all for drug offences.
They also criticized the lack of legal representation by death row inmates in appealing against their executions, and stated that there was a violation of the prisoners' basic right to counsel and there should be measures taken to prevent such situations from occurring.
[40] On 8 September 2022, both the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) expressed support for the decision to execute Abdul Rahim and condemned both the ICJ and IBAHRI for inaccurately presenting the facts of his case, stating that every prisoner equally had a right to legal representation in court but this right should not be an excuse for abusing the court process, since Abdul Rahim, whose trial lasted from 2016 to 2018, submitted an appeal merely hours before his execution and the Court of Appeal also stated that his appeal had no merit and thus refused to stay his execution.
They also stated that the penalties issued against lawyers like M Ravi for filing baseless appeals were perfectly justified should their misconduct and abuse of court processes were substantially true.
About both the ICJ's and IBAHRI's other allegations of racial discrimination of the death penalty by Singapore, both MinLaw and MHA harshly criticized both groups for casting aspersions on the city-state's use of the death penalty, as ethnicity and socio-economic status play no part in how law enforcement agencies discharge their duties, the prosecutorial decisions of the Public Prosecutor and in the decisions of the courts.