Singapore suffers from a lack of credibility over the death of American scientist Shane Todd

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Singapore and the international press are now full of the Shane Todd death inquiry. Todd, an American scientist working for a Singapore government company involved in high end scientific program which also involved a major Chinese Government company was found hanged in his Singapore apartment in mysterious circumstances.

He was a young man with a girlfriend and future. At the time of his death, he appears to have stopped working for his Singapore company, had secured another job in the US, and was planning a short holiday before commencing work and in every other respect was the most unlikely candidate for suicide, which the Singapore government claims it was.

The Singapore government’s interest in making sure of a verdict of suicide is obvious. If it is shown that Todd was murdered, as most people believe he was, that will be the end of anymore American scientists ever stepping foot in Lee Kuan Yew’s island.

Todd's family have arranged for expert witnesses who are going to testify according to the post mortem reports that he had put up a strong fight against his attackers as shown by the bruises in his hands while the Singapore government, desperate to argue for suicide, claim that those injuries resulted after he was dead. Doctors have also categorically said that he had not shown any suicidal intention whatsoever.

The Todd family has in fact managed to push for a Congressional inquiry in the US to look into his death regardless of what Singapore finds.

Following these proceedings in Singapore, one cannot fail to see that people outside Singapore are having a hard time trusting anything that Singapore says. And it must be quite clear to a Singapore observer why this is so; because the outside world has simply lost trust in the island’s legal system and the independence of their judiciary. In fact most people outside Singapore would consider the Singapore judiciary to be corrupt and beholden to the island’s Lee Kuan Yew government, and one cannot be expected to respect any claim made by such a judiciary whose reputation has been tarnished and floored.

In fact Shane Todd's mother had herself told reporters in Singapore that she feels the legal system in Singapore is "corrupt" and that in her view the Singapore legal system cannot be trusted. With a disgraceful litany of  judicial decisions of the Singapore judges clearly available on the Internet it is impossible for their Lee Kuan Yew government which is now run by the son of Lee Kuan Yew, to claim otherwise.

Singapore’s judges reputation was soiled and undermined since decades ago, firstly with the abuse of the legal system through compliant judges to destroy Lee's former political opponent JB Jeyaretnam. Through a series of trumped up charges, JB Jeyaretnam was repeatedly punished through million dollar defamation awards meted out by Lee's handpicked Kangaroo Judges, resulting in Jeyaretnam being bankrupted and being sent to jail. He has since died.

Then we have more recently Chee Soon Juan, whose fault once again was only that he was Lee's political opponent. He too was repeatedly sued for defamation of character, bankrupted and sent to jail. However recently, rather mysteriously, Lee Kuan Yew has released him form bankruptcy. Chee however is no longer the firebrand that he once was and now merely writes his blog and appears to have given up his earlier belief in the need for island wide protests to bring the father and son government down.

In my own case, other than the earlier politically motivated actions against me since 1985, in 2008 while in Singapore, I was arrested and sent to jail for 3 months for writing a blog critical of his judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean of her disgraceful judgment against Chee Soon Juan. I was also arrested for a made up claim while there that I had knocked on a police car and that for some inexplicable reason was behaving disorderly for which I had to pay a fine of $3,000.00. I was then deported from the island even though I was born there. Last year, I was also disbarred from practicing law in the island even though it made no difference to me since I live and practice law in California now. The problem that Lee Kuan Yew government faces is that all this legal system abuse is freely available on the Internet.

So any observer looking at these series of cases where the law is shamelessly stood on its head to serve the government's political ends can only come to one conclusion, which is, these judges are just downright corrupt, and willing to do anything to please their master.

And once it is found that a judge has acted corruptly, they will be looked upon forever with suspicion; because once judges are willing to abuse the law to please their Master, what guarantee is there that they will not do it again. So what guarantee is there that the Singapore judge now hearing the Shade Todd case will not once again abuse the law and claim that he committed suicide, which is the verdict the Lee Kuan Yew government wants.

It is puzzling why they failed to understand this simple fact, that once you are seen to abuse the legal system for your own ends, from that point the integrity of your judges is marred forever.

Truly, noone is going to believe anything that the Singapore judges decide on Shane Todd. And neither would any future audience ever believe in any future judgment ordered by these judges in any future case. Reputation once tarnished is almost impossible to recover.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont, California, USA
Tel: 510 491 4375
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com