Singapore has executed a 25-year-old Australian for drug trafficking despite international pleas for clemency.
Nguyen Tuong Van was hanged before dawn as a dozen friends and supporters, dressed in black, kept an overnight vigil outside the maximum-security prison. His twin brother, Nguyen Khoa, was dressed in white.
The casket holding the body of Nguyen Tuong Van is carried by undertakers to be taken to a chapel for an afternoon mass in Singapore today
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Nguyen's execution would damage relations between the two countries.
"I have told the prime minister of Singapore that I believe it will have an effect on the relationship on a people-to-people, population-to-population basis," Howard told Melbourne radio station 3AW shortly before Singapore confirmed it carried out the execution.
But Howard added that Australia would not take diplomatic action against the city-state.
"The government itself is not going to take punitive measures against the government of Singapore," he said.
Vigils were held in cities around Australia, with bells and gongs sounding 25 times at the hour of Nguyen's execution.
"The sentence was carried out this morning at Changi Prison," the Home Affairs Ministry said in an e-mailed statement.
Nguyen received a mandatory death sentence after he was caught in 2002 at Singapore's airport on his way home to Melbourne carrying about 14 ounces of heroin.
Singapore has executed more than 100 people for drug-related offenses since 1999, saying its tough laws and penalties are an effective deterrent against a crime that ruins lives. By contrast, Australia scrapped the death penalty in 1973 and hanged its last criminal in 1967.
While Australian leaders lashed out at the death sentence as "barbaric" and pleaded for clemency for Nguyen, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had ruled out a reprieve.
"We have stated our position clearly," Lee told reporters in Berlin on Thursday after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The penalty is death."