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The killing of a Bipolar Disorder sufferer


Hog

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Which is why the man's mental illness is the central focus, because there is significant doubt over whether he was aware of what was happening, and moreover if he wasn't just fitted up by some dodgy blokes who he met while travelling, as would seem to be the case.

BBC News - Death row Briton's daughter says he is 'mentally ill'

His defence team has said Mr Shaikh suffers from bipolar disorder and did not know what he was doing.

They say he was duped by a criminal gang into carrying a suitcase that did not belong to him.

His daughter said he was approached by drug smugglers in Poland and they convinced him they would make him a popstar in China.

"They recorded a song, and he can't sing, and the song itself is very very bizarre, but they convinced him that they're going to take him to the clubs in China and make him a huge popstar," said Ms Horsnell.

"He just believed he could do anything, and he could achieve anything, and if somebody had said to him that he could become a popstar, I believe he genuinely thought that."

Surely the people who let a mentally ill person travel around the world alone are to blame for this then. Job done. Case closed.

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But it is as cut and dry as that. I don't think for a minute that these people saw him and on the spur of the moment put him on a plane with a large quantity of Heroin. That sort of operation takes time and in that period surely his family or care-workers would notice he was off his meds if his behaviour had changed so radically or at least noticed that there was something wrong? It's not an on/off switch when people come off medication, the chemicals are usually in their bodies for a while and there would normally be a very marked difference in behaviour that would be noticeable to people that experience it on a day to day basis with that individual.

Not enough questions are asked when things like this happen. Unfortunately the penalty for drug smuggling in a lot of Asian countries is death. We might not like that rule but we should abide by it. It's made the Chinese look pretty bad on the world stage though.

I'm not going to argue this point any more, having worked within the mental health social work team in cornhill and lost a friend to the illness in question I can't agree with what you are saying. The last sentence of TV tanned post describes someone with bipolar disorder at the height of an emotional high perfectly ... "He just believed he could do anything, and he could achieve anything, and if somebody had said to him that he could become a popstar, I believe he genuinely thought that." The law would have nothing to do with his decision making.

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I'm not going to argue this point any more, having worked within the mental health social work team in cornhill and lost a friend to the illness in question I can't agree with what you are saying. The last sentence of TV tanned post describes someone with bipolar disorder at the height of an emotional high perfectly ... "He just believed he could do anything, and he could achieve anything, and if somebody had said to him that he could become a popstar, I believe he genuinely thought that." The law would have nothing to do with his decision making.

So you're the only person with any experience of this are you? If you knew enough about medication you'd probably know how it works and it's effects on the body and you would know the warning signs of someone coming off medication and you probably would make sure that someone with that sort of problem wasn't travelling around Europe alone.

I know how bi-polar disorder works. I'm not advocating the death penalty in this instance, all i'm doing is questioning who's to blame.

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Are you suggesting that people who have bipolar disorder should be constantly supervised and allowed no independence?

No, not at all. But if someone is clearly that mentally impaired that they can't be responsible for their own actions, then someone else clearly has to be. If they're not that mentally impaired then they should be held accountable for their own actions just like everyone else. Are you saying that all mentally impaired people should be given special treatment and treated differently from everyone else? What happened to equality?

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I don't understand how bipolar disorder would effect his decision to smuggle drugs into a country. From what i understand of the disorder, if they had taken the illness into account it may well of had the same outcome. like someone already mentioned though, this is the PRC government...

He didn;t decide to smuggle drugs. He decided to take a suitcase into the country, which just happened to contain drugs in it. It's claimed he did this on the idea that he would be made into a popstar by the guys who asked him to take it there. He believed it because he has bi-polar and was obviously in the high, spontaneous, different world pole of the illness at that point.

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His body is staying in China as well, so his family don;t even get to take him home for burial which is pretty brutal. It'll be a case of being chucked in an incinerator and that'll be the end of that. As if it's not bad enough for the family that the guy has been executed, they can't even give him a proper send off.

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There's several good points about this -

- If he was so ill, why did his family let him go to Poland to try and start an airline, build a mosque, etc?

- Likewise, where was his family when he was travelling to obscure Eastern countries?

- He apparently was never diagnosed with any mental illness in the UK

- The relatives are now blaming Britain - why not themselves?

- He was quite a nasty piece of work here in Poland, again, where was his family when he was getting investigated by the Internal Security Agency here?

I'm not convinced at all that this guy was completely innocent.

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I disagree.

So you believe his family over the medical evidence provided by the UK to China?

The only reason people believe he was bipolar was because his family said so. There's no medical evidence, no real proof of this - and his own family are now attacking the British state for not 'doing enough' when the UK has actually been praised for how much pressure they put on China.

Keep an open mind, that's all.

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I think the very fact that there is debate over whether he was or was not mentally disabled proves the execution was wrong. If someone is to be put to death, surely both sides of the capital punishment debate would agree that a minimum requirement is absolute clarity of the situation before any action can be taken.

Out of interest, how was he executed?

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I think the very fact that there is debate over whether he was or was not mentally disabled proves the execution was wrong. If someone is to be put to death, surely both sides of the capital punishment debate would agree that a minimum requirement is absolute clarity of the situation before any action can be taken.

Out of interest, how was he executed?

Lethal injection.

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Lethal injection.

I thought Michael Portillo made it clear to the world that the Lethal Injection is potentially inhumane in his hard-hitting Channel 4 shock-doc. Bloody Chinese!

I've never understood the argument in favour of the death penalty. Has anyone on here got particularly strong views on it? 'Eye for an eye' doesn't cut it for me because an organised, sterile execution is harldy the same as a cold blooded murder. Killing someone for smuggling drugs is obviously mental. It saves tax payer's money by cutting down prisoner numbers maybe?... I'm sure the legal fees, man hours, etc during the whole processing of those few death row prisoners mount up to more. Acts as a deterrent?... doubt it, no more than life in prison I reckon.

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I'm not a fan of the death penalty but I can see why China killed this man.

He wasn't retarded... far from it. He managed a taxi company.

Somehow he got conned into taking 4kg of heroin into China.

I find it hard to believe (even if he was bipolar) that he didn't know what he was doing.

If his drugs had hit the street he could have contributed to the deaths of over 28000 people.

I'd rather he spent a long time in prison but sympathy is something that won't be coming from me for this wretch.

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I think we should be questioning his local council as to how someone that vulnerable could've been allowed contact with the sort of people that convinced him they could make him a pop star in China if he smuggled Heroin in for them...

This is a ridiculous statement.

"Hello, Mr councillor? Why did you let that sad man run away with those naughty boys?"

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