A Malaysian man convicted of drug trafficking was executed here on Friday, the government said, bringing to 11 the number of people to have died under the city-state's capital punishment laws this year.

Vignes Mourthi, 22, was sentenced to death in August last year after being found guilty of trafficking 27.65 grams (0.97 ounces) of heroin.

"Vignes Mourthi, a convicted drug trafficker, was executed this morning at Changi Prison," a prison spokesman said in a one-line statement e-mailed to AFP in which it outlined the case against Mourthi.

Series of appeals

Police had said Mourthi, from the northern Malaysian state of Perak, had given the drugs to an undercover police officer in Singapore in September 2001.

Mourthi had launched a series of appeals to have his death sentence overturned, the last of which a three-member judicial panel that included Chief Justice Yong Pung How rejected on Thursday.

Mourthi's lawyer in his final appeal, M. Ravi, told the court on Thursday that his client had been the victim of a serious miscarriage of justice, the Straits Times reported.

Mourthi and his family had previously maintained his innocence.

Capital punishment is rarely discussed by Singapore authorities or in the local media, with the government generally ensuring the issue remains low-key.

But in a rare statement about the issue, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told BBC television this week that he thought "about 70 or 80" people had been executed this year.

His spokesman released a statement on Thursday, two days after the BBC interview went to air, saying only 10 people had been put to death in 2003.

Mourthi's case brings to 11 the number of people executed in Singapore this year.

According to government figures, 28 people were executed in 2002, 27 in 2001 and 21 in 2000.

Highest execution rates

Amnesty said in its annual report for 2003 that the city-state had one of the highest execution rates in the world, relative to its population of about 4.2 million people.

Goh, who reviews every death sentence along with his Cabinet colleagues, brushed off criticism about the government's use of the death penalty.

"If you don't punish them and they manage to get their drugs through to Singapore, more people would be punished by their acts," he said in the BBC interview.

Singapore carries out the death penalty by hanging. - AFP