Singapore jails Australian for killing man in ‘act of religious hostility toward Muslims’

A Singapore court on Friday sentenced an Australian man to five and a half years in prison for killing an elderly Singaporean man and hurting his wife with a thrown wine bottle, in what the judge called an act of religious hostility toward Muslims.

Andrew Gosling was convicted of “causing death and grievous hurt by a rash act” for throwing a wine bottle at a group of people two storeys below him, striking a 73-year-old man and killing him in 2019. The bottle ricocheted and injured the shoulder of the man’s wife.

“I agree with the prosecution that the present offence involves an element of demonstration of religious hostility towards Muslims,” said judge Victor Yeo. “Such offences could seriously undermine Singapore’s racial and religious harmony and must not be tolerated and must be firmly dealt with.”

Singapore is a multiracial country of 5.5 million people, of whom about 16 per cent are Muslim, with larger Buddhist and Christian communities. It has a predominantly ethnic Chinese population with sizeable Malay and Indian minorities, according to the 2020 census. The victims have been identified as ethnic Malay Muslims.

The court had been told that Gosling admitted during the investigation he was “angry and upset” over Islamic militant attacks in Bali and Melbourne in which many Australians had died, and wanted to “startle” the group after identifying them as Muslims.

Prosecutors said Gosling, who was 49 years old at the time of the crime, ran away, shouting “crude, religiously charged vulgarities” about Muslims.

His actions had the “wider impact of causing unease in Singapore, especially among the broader Muslim population” and showed religious hostility, the prosecution said.