THE High Court will deliver its judgment in the appeal hearing of convicted Swiss vandal Oliver Fricker against his five-month jail sentence on Wednesday.
The 32-year-old has been in jail for seven weeks since a lower court handed him a three-month and three-stroke sentence for spray painting an MRT train and another two months for entering a protected place at Changi Depot.
The then IT consultant pleaded guilty to the two May offences committed with alleged accomplice, Briton Dane Alexander Lloyd, 29, who is at large.
A third charge of vandalism by cutting the fence of the MRT depot belonging to the Land Transport Authority was taken into consideration.
On Friday, Justice V.K. Rajah allowed the prosecution's application to admit the previous conviction of the Swiss national.
The court heard that Fricker was placed on probation and fined in Switzerland in 2001 for damaging public property but the details of what he did were not known.
I feel that oliver fricker should be badly punished, because he should know the law before committing crimes such as vandalizing, especially on a public train. This action is despicable and it will be too late for him to apologize and appeal now.
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Yes i agree that oliver fricker must be punished. However i feel that the reason why he is punished so severely is because he has exposed how easy it is to just walk into the MRT depot. Singapore has been embarrassed greatly, we were lucky that Oliver Fricker was not a terrorist and did not plant a bomb. A terrorist would have made it into the depot with ease too and the planting of the bomb will be unnoticed. Many lives will be lost by then.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, we should also count ourselves lucky that Oliver Fricker was there to expose our lack of security, though what he did was wrong. I hope that security will now be much tighter and no unauthorized personnel will be able to enter the bus interchange or the MRT depot. If not, just think about the thousands of people that take public transport daily. We cannot afford to lose lives due to the lack of security.
Marcus Lau De Hao
Ke Xuen,
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with your viewpoint that Oliver Fricker should be badly punished.
Many people feel that he has been charged for vandalism only and therefore should not be given such a heavy sentence. However, this is not true. What Mr. Fricker did was to not just vandalise an MRT train, but also trespass a protected area. And in some places, you may get shot.
I would agree that he did a good job and brightened the train up a little. However, I do not see why netizens should be praising him. What if he was a terrorist? What if he planted a bomb? I can bet the attitude of the netizens would change immediately. Just because he "did a good job", he should not be let off that easily, and we should not be swayed by it either.
I also agree with Marcus Lau that we should consider ourselves lucky that Oliver Fricker was there to expose our lack of security. This is an important lesson to be learnt by the Singaporeans and the Singaporean Government itself.
Thank you.