A man who left Germany to spend Ramadan with his family in Singapore was stopped at a checkpoint on his way back and found carrying just over a kilogram of cannabis. He was hanged on 16 April 2026. His name was Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj. He was 46.

 A man who left Germany to spend Ramadan with his family in Singapore was stopped at a checkpoint on his way back and found carrying just over a kilogram of cannabis. He was hanged on 16 April 2026. His name was Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj. He was 46.

His judge found he was only a courier, not a kingpin. But Singapore’s law gave the judge no choice. No certificate of cooperation from prosecutors meant no mercy. The mandatory de@th sentence was imposed.

His wife Alexandra wrote from Germany begging the President for clemency. Their son Naqeeb, 11 years old and battling serious illness, had died just five months earlier. The family had never once been able to visit Omar in prison in eight years, too poor, too broken, too far away. Their daughter Amal, now 9, grew up without her father. She will never get him back.

The EU, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch all pleaded for his life. Singapore hanged him anyway. It was the country’s eighth execution for a drug offence in 2026 alone, and the year is not yet five months old.

Cannabis is legal in Germany, where Omar lived. It is legal or decriminalised in dozens of countries today. In Singapore, one kilogram of it cost a father his life, two children their father, and a wife her husband, while the world watched and said nothing loud enough to matter.