Gobi Avedian

Gobi a/l Avedian (born 7 April 1988) is a Malaysian drug convict who is currently serving a 15-year term of imprisonment in Singapore for attempted importation of a Class C drug.

Born on 7 April 1988 in Malaysia, Gobi Avedian, who lived in Johor Bahru, was a security guard working in Singapore on a work permit, and was also married with two children.

Gobi was at first, charged in 2014 with the capital charge of trafficking over 40.22g of heroin, which attracts the death penalty in Singapore.

In his defence, Gobi stated that he was unaware he was carrying heroin and thought he was carrying "chocolate drugs" as what his two friends told him when he received an offer to deliver the drugs for money to pay his daughter's surgery fees.

At the end of the trial, the High Court acquitted Gobi of the original charge after accepting his defence and account.

In late 2014, Gobi's daughter suffered from a health issue and required an operation, which would take place in January 2015.

As he was burdened with the expensive hospital bills since his salary as a security guard was very low and could not afford the medical fees, he was asked by two friends "Vinod" and "Guru" to transport drugs to Singapore.

According to Gobi after his arrest and on his trial, he was paid RM500 to transport each bag of "chocolate drugs" from Malaysia to Singapore.

At first, he declined to do so, but it was due to his daughter's date of operation drawing near, he agreed to help transport the drugs.

Gobi claimed that he asked Vinod if the drugs were dangerous, and he was assured by Vinod that these drugs were merely disco drugs mixed with chocolate, and are not dangerous, and Vinod added that the punishment, if caught with these drugs, would be a small fine or light punishment.

After accepting the job, Gobi delivered the drugs for eight to nine times from Malaysia to Singapore.

On 11 December 2014, 26-year-old Gobi carried out his ninth or tenth attempt to deliver the drugs while on his way to work in Singapore.

However, after crossing the border into Singapore, he was arrested at the Woodlands Checkpoint when he was approached and searched by the officers, who discovered the drugs.

Upon further testing of the packages however, it turned out that the disco drugs and chocolate drugs were actually heroin, and the heroin found weighed a total of 40.22g.

In view of the discovery, Gobi was charged with capital drug trafficking, a crime which attracts the death penalty in Singapore if found guilty, unless Gobi could prove that he either acted as a mere courier or suffering from a mental illness (which might warrant life imprisonment instead if fulfilled).

As such, the High Court sentenced him to 15 years' imprisonment and ten strokes of the cane for a lower charge in May 2017.

Gobi would stand trial in the High Court three years later in 2017, with defence lawyer Shashi Nathan (who formerly represented convicted murderer Iskandar Rahmat) defending him in his trial.

During Gobi's trial, Gobi gave his account of what happened prior to his capture and he argued that he did not know that these "chocolate drugs" contained 40.22g of heroin.

However, the prosecution argued that Gobi was willfully blind to the drugs' existence, and has failed to rebut the statutory presumption of knowledge of the nature of the drugs he was carrying.

At the end of the trial on 15 May 2017, the High Court's judge Lee Seiu Kin accepted that he did not know the bundles he was carrying contained heroin, and ruled that he should not be held liable for the capital charge, which required the conditions of the "presumption of knowledge of drugs" and "wilfull blindness" to prove a drug trafficker guilty.

As such, Justice Lee convicted Gobi of a lesser charge of attempted trafficking of a Class C drug (which refers to drugs that did not attract the death penalty), and sentenced him to 15 years' imprisonment and ten strokes of the cane, and backdate Gobi's sentence to the date of his arrest.

However, a year later, the prosecution appealed against Gobi's acquittal, arguing that Gobi did not take enough steps to satisfy himself that the drugs he transported were not those that would attract the death penalty, such as probing the people who gave him assurances.

Upon the prosecution's appeal however, Gobi was convicted of the original capital charge and sentenced to death by the Court of Appeal in October 2018, as the appellate court found that the lower court has erred in finding Gobi not guilty.

On 25 October 2018, the Court of Appeal decided to overturn the High Court's decision.

Instead, they convicted Gobi of the original charge and dismissed his caning and 15-year sentence.

In its judgement, the Court of Appeal agreed with the prosecution that Gobi had failed to rebut the statutory presumption of knowledge of the nature of the drugs he was carrying, and stated Gobi should have done more to find out what exactly was the substance he was told to bring in to Singapore, but he simply "did not bother".

The court also commented that while Gobi did ask about the possible penalties for the crime he was committing, the court said this would not have helped him identify the drug.

It was insufficient to just state that he did not know what sort of drugs he was transporting.

And, if Gobi really did not want to bring in any illegal drugs that could warrant a death sentence, he should have go and research what are the drugs that might attract such a harsh punishment and identify them but he did not do so.

Due to this, he was deemed guilty of the original capital charge of trafficking heroin.

Since Gobi was not certified to have assisted the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) in a substantive way, and did not suffer from diminished responsibility, he was ineligible for the alternative penalty of life imprisonment.

Hence, Gobi was sentenced to death by hanging.

Subsequently, after he was sentenced to death, Gobi filed for clemency, which would allow his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment if successful.

Subsequently, Gobi filed for clemency, which was rejected in July 2019.

He later made two different appeals; the first to delay his execution and the second to re-open his case.

On 10 July 2019, Gobi's clemency petition was rejected by President Halimah Yacob.

There were twelve more prisoners, including three other Malaysian drug convicts on death row - Datchinamurthy Kataiah, Abdul Helmi Ab Halim and Rahmat Karimon - who also lost their clemency pleas at around the same time Gobi failed to obtain clemency.

There were international fears that these mass clemency rejections would result in an increasing trend of executions of drug traffickers in Singapore, and some Malaysian lawyers also claimed that Singapore had intentionally targeted Malaysian convicts for executions, which the Singapore government refuted in return.

Although Gobi lost his bid for a stay of execution in February 2020, he was eventually successful in persuading the Court of Appeal in October 2020 to re-open his case in light of a 2019 landmark case ruling, and he subsequently has his death sentence commuted to his original sentence of 15 years' imprisonment and ten strokes of the cane, thus enabling him to escape the death penalty a second time.

Later, in January 2020, both Gobi and Datchinamurthy filed for a legal application to delay their executions, because they alleged that the executions at Changi Prison were carried out by kicking the back of the prisoner's neck in the event of the rope breaking, which meant that the convicts would be suffering from unlawful execution and thus being unfairly treated by law.