SINGAPORE — The remains of murderer Kho Jabing, who had his death sentence carried out in Singapore on Friday (May 20), are expected to arrive at Miri Airport, Sarawak around 4pm (4pm, Singapore time) on Saturday.

A family member told the Malaysian High Commission in Singapore recently that Kho, a Sarawakian, was expected to be laid to rest at the 1st Mile Muslim Cemetery, Jalan Kuala Baram, Miri. The 31-year-old had converted from Christianity to Islam in prison and chose Muhammad as his Muslim name.

Kho, from Ulu Baram, Sarawak, was sentenced to the mandatory death penalty after he killed Chinese construction worker Cao Ruyin in 2008 during a robbery near Geylang Drive. He bashed the victim on the head repeatedly with a tree branch, causing 14 skull fractures.

He failed to secure a stay of execution on his death sentence after the Singapore Court of Appeal on Friday turned down another last-minute application by his lawyers.

The court drama behind Kho’s case began in 2011 with a failed challenge against his murder conviction, only to be spared the hangman’s noose two years later when amendments to the mandatory death penalty regime gave judges the discretion to sentence certain types of murderers to life imprisonment instead.

But his reprieve was scrubbed following an appeal by prosecutors.

Kho was due to hang on Nov 6 last year but was granted a stay of execution less than 24 hours beforehand, when his lawyer contended that he had new and compelling evidence to prove a miscarriage of justice.

The appellate court dismissed the case in April this year, observing in its ruling that there have been more attempts to re-open criminal appeals that have concluded, with the majority of these being unmeritorious bids.

Kho’s execution was rescheduled to 6am Friday morning, but once again, his new lawyer, Gino Hardial Singh, appealed to commute his sentence at the last minute on Wednesday. The case was heard on Thursday and thrown out again, with the judges reiterating their warning against allowing convicted offenders to “prolong matters ad infinitum by drip-feeding their arguments one-by-one through the filing of multiple applications”.

But even before the hearing took place, Kho’s lawyers made an urgent application for his execution to be held off on grounds of constitutionality. At Friday’s hearing — the fifth time Kho’s case had gone before the Court of Appeal — the judges took apart the lawyers’ arguments point by point, and admonished them for abusing court processes.

Kho was executed at 3.30pm, believed to be the first time a death row inmate has been hanged outside of the traditional time of 6am on a Friday. - with Bernama.