Amnesty International has joined a chorus of criticism of China over the execution by lethal injection of Akmal Shaikh, a British convicted drug smuggler said by friends and family to have been mentally ill.
This is a typical claim made by anyone caught committing a crime these days, but if he was mentally ill then perhaps those who allowed him to leave the country to sell drugs should face charges of some kind too. It is not China's problem that we believe in tossing sick people out onto the street under the guise of 'care in the community'. They have a right to defend themselves and to uphold their laws.
Whenever a British person is arrested in another country there is an automatic reaction of "we must rescue him from the barbarians" as though other countries laws do not count for anything.Strictly speaking, he was a smuggler, not a dealer; but that is by the way. In China if they catch you with that much heroin they invoke the death penalty.
Despite being mentally ill, I note this fellow managed to make his way from the UK to Poland to Central Asia and to China. I am not convinced he did not know he was carrying heroin in his luggage.
If he really was mentally ill and duped, then he was unlucky. But life is sometimes like that, and China is very tough with the death penalty.
To my mind a pertinent question is why the Government feels unable to block the extradition to the USA of Gary McKinnon who also is mentally ill (so his supporters and medics familiar with his case claim), this time with Asperger's Syndrome; but is making a song and dance now about how dreadful Mr Shaik's fate is because he was mentally ill. There's a lack of consistency here.His mental illness was apparently bipolar disorder. This illness was formerly called manic depression, and the late Spike Milligan was probably the UK's most famous sufferer. The illness can be devastating but it certainly doesn't mean its sufferers are intellectually deficient as the supporters of this man are implying. As for the smuggling of 4kg of heroin, this is nearly 9lb in weight, a substantial amount to be unaware of. My feeling was that he was duped, but only into thinking he could get away with it.Slightly related - I've seen a bipolar friend shoplift a goldfish during a manic episode before. That was pretty impressive.
No one's ever going to know now if he really was too ill to know what he was doing, the point is that it should have been taken into consideration during the trial and wasn't. And he should have had a chance to appeal, but was refused. China now saying "oh but no one told us" despite it being all over the bloody news and them getting letters and phonecalls from our government. And according to China it's up to the mentally ill person themself to provide the evidence - spot the tiny flaw in that one.If China has a policy on mental illness/responsibility in criminals then yes they should have followed it. I can respect a system more if it follows it's own rules. (Gary McKinnon seems to be about pleasing the US government rather than justice)
I'm quite surprised that China even has such a policy though and would have thought they only worked on the practical (will he do it again after we execute him) principle (which so far has a 100% success rate)
However, if they had assessed his mental state then under any reasonable definition they would have to conclude that he knew what he was doing. As has been said there was too much planning to get there etc.