Barlow and Chambers were not evil men. I remember, too, just 18 months later — when their trial began on July 17, 1985 — that Barlow and Chambers would no longer look each other in the eye. On this date in 1986, Malaysia hanged Australian nationals Brian Chambers and Kevin Barlow for trafficking heroin. Register, Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout. Barlow was wearing a blindfold when he was executed by hanging (Image: Channel 7 Malaysia). After an inmate's appeals have been exhausted, gizmodo.com reports, an execution order is ordered by the court and the date of execution is set. The Barlow and Chambers execution was the hanging in 1986 by Malaysia of two Westerners, Kevin John Barlow (Australian and British) and Brian Geoffrey Shergold Chambers (Australian) of Perth, Western Australia, for the drug trafficking of 141.9 g of heroin.. Your email address will not be published. No one has the right to take someone else’s life. No one could possibly imagine the anguish of a last goodbye to a son or a brother, knowing that in the morning they will be taken out and killed at dawn. I knew it was over.”, Sue Chambers released a handwritten statement: “I believe in God. This was innocent bystanders being condemned to a trauma so uniquely painful and poignant to be unimaginable. While Chambers was an experienced drug courier, Barlow was a rookie; reportedly, his visible nervousness in the airport gave the game away. Find professional Kevan Barlow videos and B-roll stock footage available to licence for film, television, advertising and corporate uses. Join the conversation, you are commenting as, Overland’s stunning concession in Lawyer X Royal Commission. Television broadcasts have so far not shown pictures of the small crowd outside Pudu Prison, of the truck driving away with a pair of bare feet sticking out of one shroud, or of the Barlow cremation. The parents and family members who Barlow and Chambers had early agreed to “keep out of it” now watched on helplessly from the court gallery, as each man tried to implicate the other in a desperate gambit that at best would send one man to the gallows while the other walked free. With each desperate manoeuvre came brief moments of hope, as the Malaysian officials’ ditherings were interpreted as a possible weakening of their resolve to proceed with the hangings; only to be followed by heartbreak and angst as each was dismissed or rejected out of hand. 1961: Edwin Bush, Identikitted 1797: Abraham Johnstone. (He had also refused out of revulsion to pack the product into his stomach or anus.). It was a high-risk strategy that in the end meant only that in their efforts to save themselves, each had condemned the other to die. An Australian grandmother will be told she will die only 24 hours before she is hanged for smuggling drugs into Malaysia, the country's self-described 'number one' executioner has revealed. And I remember the gut-wrenching moment of watching Barbara Barlow and her children, Michelle and Christopher; Sue and Brian Chambers and daughters Margaret and Kathryn, returning from their last visit to the condemned men — heartbroken and distraught. Barlow and Chambers’ fate was sealed. He said that days before the execution, "Chambers was high on heroin. After all, it was only a “matter of time before things would be sorted, bribes paid and they we will be back in Oz again”. The Barlow and Chambers executions were the hangings in 1986 by Malaysia of two Westerners, Kevin John Barlow (Australian and British) and Brian Geoffrey Shergold Chambers (Australian) of Perth, Western Australia, for transporting 141.9 g of heroin. And I remember lying to Chambers’ sister, Kathryn back at the hotel later when through her tears she asked: “They don’t hang white men in Malaysia, do they?”. His hanging was carried out three years after the Barlow and Chambers execution.Some reports described him as being the first Briton to be hanged under Malaysia's drugs laws, but Kevin Barlow had joint Australian–British nationality.. To join the conversation, please The Barlow and Chambers execution refers to the hanging on July 7, 1986 in Malaysia of two Australian citizens, Kevin John Barlow and Brian Geoffrey Chambers of Perth, Western Australia, for the drug trafficking of 141.9 g of heroin. They had no sense of their plight — seemingly oblivious to the fact the Malaysian Government, in an attempt to crack down on a blossoming and insidious drug trade taking hold of the country, had recently introduced new laws making the death penalty mandatory for any one in possession of just 15g of a banned narcotic. Find professional Execution Chamber videos and stock footage available for license in film, television, advertising and corporate uses. International appeals from all the usual suspects — Australia Prime Minister Bob Hawke, the Pope, various human rights organizations, and even Margaret Thatcher (because Barlow was a British-born dual citizen) — failed to move the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The Barlow and Chambers execution refers to the hanging in 1986 by Malaysia of two Australian citizens, Kevin John Barlow and Brian Geoffrey Chambers of Perth, Western Australia, for the drug trafficking of 141.9 g of heroin.. THE tragedy of the 1986 hanging of Kevin John Barlow and Brian Geoffrey Chambers behind the imposing concrete walls of Malaysia’s Pudu Prison, was for me, not the death of the two men I had come to know, but in the victims it left behind. Chambers was a highly intelligent drug addict and Barlow was a naive kid from down the street." Karpal Singh, the attorney for the two, told reporters at the massive steel gates of Pudu Prison that prison authorities told him the two had been executed. Chan and Sukumaran, like Barlow and Chambers, may well be freed forever by their state-sanctioned killings. B This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. They were allowed the luxury of Western food and time to exercise and sit outside in the sunlight. Over the 20 months between arrest and their July 1985 trial, they realized their true predicament. They shared a cell. The local lawyer, Rasiah Rajahsingham, who had initially been engaged to represent both men, had quickly determined that given the evidence against them, he could at best save only one. Getty Images offers exclusive rights-ready and premium royalty-free analog, HD, and 4K video of the highest quality. “No,” I offered in reply, knowing full well they probably would. But Malaysia’s strongman prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, with a domestic political constituency to play to, was unmoved and determined to make an example of the “criminal Westerners”. They had made a pact, they said, “not to get their families involved”. This is how the Guardian reported the event. The months leading up to the execution. The families left no stone unturned enlisting the support of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and even the Pope, in a bid for mercy in order to save their loved ones. Stupid, naive — greedy, even, — but like Chan and Sukumaran, capable and perhaps deserving of redemption and a second chance. Former police chief Simon Overland has been grilled by the Royal Commission into the Lawyer X scandal, and revealed how he kept the use of Nicola Gobbo from the state’s top prosecutors.