Drug Convict Released from Singapore Jail

A German woman jailed in Singapore in 2002 for drug trafficking was released two years early on Friday after earning credits for good behavior, a prison department spokeswoman said. Julia Bohl, who was then 22 years old, narrowly escaped the death penalty after police seized 687 grams (24.2 ounces) of marijuana from her Singapore apartment in March, 2002. In Singapore, which has some of the toughest drug laws in the world, possessing more than 500 grams of marijuana carries a mandatory death sentence. However Bohl's legal counsel successfully convinced authorities to measure the drugs by its pure content, which amounted to only 287 grams, enabling her to receive a sentence of just five years. Singapore Prisons Service senior public affairs officer Lim Soo Eng said Bohl's early release on Friday was in accordance with standard policy for prisoners' sentences to be cut by a third for good behavior.It was unclear whether Bohl, who lived in Singapore with her parents as a teenager and was doing an internship with a locally-based multinational company at the time of her arrest, had immediately returned to Germany. Bohl's case has caused frustration among anti-death penalty activists in Singapore who have questioned why local people convicted of possessing marijuana have been executed.