Abdul Rahim Shapiee

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.

Abdul Rahim bin Shapiee was born to parents Shapiee bin Yahya and Zubedah binte Mohd in 1977.

He had a brother Muhammad Hanafiee and sister Norhafizah, and he also had several cousins (including two of Chinese descent), uncles and aunts.

He worked as an Uber driver prior to his arrest, and had been arrested several times for drug consumption.

It was revealed that between 2010 and 2021, Malays made up 66 of the 120 prosecutions for drug trafficking, where over 76% of them were sentenced to death.

50 out of 77 people sentenced to death between 2010 and 2021 were revealed to be Malays.

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.

However, the lawsuit was dismissed by the courts on 2 December 2021, because there was no evidence of differential treatment towards the inmates based on their ethnicity and race, and these allegations should be considered as an abuse of the court processes due to them being potentially casting aspersions on the integrity and reputation of Singapore's laws.

Abdul Rahim's two lawyers (including M Ravi) were both ordered to pay S$10,000 in costs for filing the lawsuit.

On 29 July 2022, Abdul Rahim Shapiee's death warrant was finalized and it was mailed to his sister.

Abdul Rahim's execution was scheduled to take place on 5 August 2022.

Ong Seow Ping, Abdul Rahim's accomplice, was also scheduled to hang on the same date and time as Abdul Rahim.

Abdul Rahim had also admitted that he consumed methamphetamine to make up for the lowered intake of diamorphine he adopted from July 2014 onwards.

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.

This worked out to around S$5,200 a month.

He did not work as a driver since July 2014 and it reduced his income, and given the high costs he incurred from purchasing his drugs, his low income would not have allowed him to afford the drugs unless he made up for it with the huge profit he gained from drug trafficking (as proven by the proceeds he yielded from trafficking).

After his arrest on 3 August 2015, Abdul Rahim, who was also charged with consuming drugs, was convicted in March 2018 and despite the prosecution's acknowledgement of his role as a courier and himself having provided substantive assistance to the authorities, Abdul Rahim still received the death penalty since he had performed duties that exceeded that of a mere drug runner.

After failing to overturn his sentence through appeal, Abdul Rahim was hanged on 5 August 2022.

One of his two accomplices, Ong Seow Ping, was also arrested and executed for drug trafficking, and the other was serving a life sentence for the same offence.

Abdul Rahim was arrested on 3 August 2015 after the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) monitored him and raided his flat.

The search in his flat yielded 14 packets and three straws of diamorphine, and the total amount of the diamorphine weighed not less than 41.24g.

Abdul Rahim admitted to possessing these drugs for trafficking and confessed that some of the drugs were intended for his own consumption.

During his time in custody, Abdul Rahim was contacted by his accomplice Ong Seow Ping, who did not know about his capture.

Under the police's instructions, Abdul Rahim contacted Ong for an arranged delivery of one pound of the drugs, which allowed the police to arrest him as well after he was lured out of his home to deliver the drugs.

Ong's flat was also searched and the police found 51.73g of diamorphine in his possession.

The arrests of Abdul Rahim and Ong led to both of them being charged for drug trafficking, which carries the death penalty in Singapore.

A third accomplice, Nuraiin binte Rosman, was arrested at the same location together with Abdul Rahim.

She was sentenced to life imprisonment in a separate trial since she was acting as a mere courier at the time of the offence.

She later became one of the prosecution's witnesses at Abdul Rahim's trial.

The joint trial of Abdul Rahim Shapiee and Ong Seow Ping lasted between 28 September 2017 and 15 March 2018 at the High Court.

Abdul Rahim stated in his defence that he intended for a large amount of the diamorphine for his consumption, and stated that he was threatened by the police investigators to confess or that his family and wife would be prosecuted as well for his offence.

The High Court however, rejected that the police had threatened Abdul Rahim since the fears harboured by Abdul Rahim were self-perceived and not possible to happen, and also, Abdul Rahim's claim of his high intake of diamorphine (half a packet) was disputed because of the case evidence showing that Abdul Rahim normally smoked one straw every two days, and based on the calculations through the amount of diamorphine he possessed, Abdul Rahim's supply would last him for nearly three years.

Before his case, 54-year-old Singaporean Hamzah Ibrahim was the first to receive the death sentence in 2017 for trafficking 26.29g of heroin despite receiving the certificate for providing substantive assistance, due to the High Court judging that Hamzah had performed duties exceeding those of a courier.

As such, Abdul Rahim was found guilty of capital drug trafficking on 15 March 2018 and convicted as charged.

Although the prosecution acknowledged Abdul Rahim as a courier and issued him a certificate of substantive assistance for cooperating with the authorities in arresting Ong and their disruption of drug-related activities, the trial judge Valerie Thean found that Abdul Rahim was not acting as a mere courier, as there was evidence to show that he repacked the drugs and gained payment for his deliveries, which went beyond a courier's duties of transporting the drugs.

For this aspect, 41-year-old Abdul Rahim Shapiee was deemed ineligible for the alternative sentence of life imprisonment, and hence, he was sentenced to death on 15 March 2018, the same date of his conviction.

45-year-old Ong Seow Ping also received the death sentence on the same date of Abdul Rahim's sentencing after the prosecution did not certify him as a courier.

Abdul Rahim was not the first certified courier to be sentenced to death.

On 5 March 2020, Abdul Rahim lost his appeal against the sentence, with the Court of Appeal determining that the trial judge's findings in his case were correct and without error.

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.