“Tun (Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad) and Ismail Sabri (Yaakob) had appealed (to the Singapore government),” N Surendran, a former MP, said.

In 2018, during his second stint as prime minister, Mahathir had written to the Singapore government asking for a stay of execution of P Prabu. Prabu was, however, executed.

A year later, then law minister Liew Vui Keong wrote to Singapore seeking clemency for P Pannir Selvam, who is presently on death row in Singapore.

In 2021, Ismail had written to his counterpart, Lee Hsien Loong, appealing for leniency for KD Nagaenthran on “humanitarian grounds”. Nagaenthran was, however, executed the following year.

Surendran, an adviser to Lawyers for Liberty, described as “meaningful” the appeals made by Mahathir and Ismail.

“It made a very big difference, certainly to the families. It made a very big difference because I was in touch with those families.

“It was a consolation to the family members that the government, the prime ministers, were speaking up for them,” he said.

Earlier this evening, Surendran was among those who took part in a candlelight vigil in front of the Singapore high commission in Kuala Lumpur for his client, K Datchinamurthy.

Datchinamurthy is scheduled to be executed in Singapore tomorrow for smuggling 44.96g of diamorphine into the city-state.

He was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to death in 2015. He was scheduled to be executed in 2022 but obtained a stay of execution pending a legal suit against the Singapore government over his death sentence.

He is one of four Malaysians on death row in Singapore whom the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia mentioned earlier this month in urging the government to intervene in their executions.

The other three are Pannir Selvam, S Saminathan and R Lingkesvaran.