Unless campaigners succeed in saving his life, a 21-year-old Malaysian will be hanged in Singapore on Friday after being found guilty of trafficking in heroin.

Amnesty International (AI) said in a statement that it has urged the Singapore president to reconsider a clemency petition and commute the death sentence on Yong Vui Kong of Sabah.

He was arrested in July 2007 at the age of 19, when working as a drug mule. He was found guilty of carrying 42.47gm of heroin into the republic and received the mandatory death sentence in January this year.

Last week, the Singapore High Court granted Yong an unprecedented stay of execution to allow his lawyer to argue his case before the Court of Appeal.

amnesty international and the death sentence However, the attorney-general has filed an application to quash the stay, on the ground that this is beyond the judge's jurisdiction. The application will be heard tomorrow .

Under Singapore law, judges hearing a capital case for trafficking of more than 15gm of heroin are not allowed to take into account mitigating circumstances in favour of the accused.

In spite of this, Yong's age was cited as a special circumstance and the trial judge even told the prosecution to consider reducing the charge to a non-capital one. However, the prosecutor declined to do so.

Yong's background is also seen by quarters of civil society as a reason to reconsider the death sentence.

Singapore blog The Online Citizen , which is actively campaigning against the death sentence, reported that Yong is the sixth of seven children raised by a single mother in Sandakan.

He started taking up odd jobs to supplement his family's income at the age of 10 and dropped out of school two years later to work full time.

At 15, he moved to Kota Kinabalu and subsequently Kuala Lumpur, where he got involved in triads, who used him as a drug mule.

' Mother not told yet '

According to his brother, Yong was aware that the packages he carried contained drugs but was assured by his superiors that the amount was insufficient to warrant the mandatory death sentence.

His brother also told The Online Citizen that the family has kept the news from their mother, and that Yong applied for a stay of execution so that he could tell her himself.

The Malaysian High Commission, alongside the mainstream media on both sides of the causeway, have thus far been silent on the case.

This is unlike the case of Australian citizen Nguyen Tuong Van , who was found guilty of a similar offence in Singapore. Despite official efforts to save him, he was hanged in 2005.

AI maintains that the mandatory death sentence is cruel and inhumane as it does not allow the court to consider alternative punishments, or the circumstances around the particular offence or the person charged.