Death sentence for Nigeria man in China drug case

			Death sentence, Nigerian, China, drug case

A court in southern China has upheld a death sentence for a Nigerian man convicted of dealing heroin in the industrial center of Shenzhen.

Osonwa Okey Noberts was convicted by a Shenzhen court in June of buying 13 pounds (six kilograms) of heroin from traffickers and supplying it to lower-level dealers, the official China Daily newspaper reported Thursday.

His Chinese girlfriend and two other Chinese citizens also received the death penalty in June, but had their sentences commuted to life in prison conditional on good behavior for two years, the newspaper said.

The verdicts were handed down on appeal by the Guangdong provincial court on Tuesday.

Noberts' death sentence will be automatically reviewed by China's highest court in Beijing, which could take months to render a decision. The court rarely overturns death sentences, which are carried out either by gunshot or, increasingly, lethal injection.

The case underscores increasing problems with cross-border drug dealing in China's relatively prosperous coastal regions. Four other foreign suspects are in custody in Shenzhen on suspicion of smuggling heroin from Pakistan.

China executed a British man for drug smuggling in December, ignoring international pleas for clemency on the ground he was mentally unstable.

Rampant drug abuse was virtually wiped out after the 1949 Communist revolution, but came roaring back in the 1980s following the relaxation of economic and social strictures. China now has about 1.2 million registered drug addicts, although the actual number of users is believed to be far higher.

Associated Press