editorial comment and the world is now a much safer place......

Award-winning French chef Francois Fabien Mermilliod was sentenced to the minimum term of one year in prison today in connection with a high-profile drug case in Singapore.

Mermilliod, 29, was one six foreigners charged in the case, including the former British editor of the magazine Singapore Tatler, Nigel Simmond, who was sentenced to two years in prison in December.

Mermilliod pleaded guilty to one charge of possession of cocaine in today’s court appearance.

Mermilliod could have been sentenced to up to ten years’ imprisonment, a fine of Singapore dollars 20,000, or both.

Two Singaporeans and Tunisian marketing manager Guiga Lyes Ben Laroussi are facing execution for drug trafficking in the case, in which 14 people were charged, among them artists, finance executives and others among the city state’s high flyers. All are charged with either possession or consumption of illegal narcotics.

Authorities seized 64 grams of cocaine, 5.1 grams of the methamphetamine known as ice, 1.018 ounces of marijuana and 52 pills of the party drug ecstasy in the October 8 bust.

Singapore has some of the world’s strictest – and most thoroughly enforced – drug laws, including a mandatory death penalty by hanging for anyone caught with more than 15 grams of heroin or more than 17.6 ounces of marijuana.

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