The Home Affairs Ministry said 36 percent of the people executed between 1993 and 2003 were foreigners, without giving specific numbers.

Over the past five years the government said the percentage of foreigners executed had fallen to 27 percent, with 37 out of 138 people executed being non-Singaporean.

It said nearly three quarters of those executed over the past five years were punished for drug-related offences, while the others were for murder and arms-related offences.

The government defended the number of foreigners being executed here, pointing out that one in four people living in Singapore were born overseas.

The release of the figures comes as an Australian man, Nguyen Tuong Van, 23, faces the death penalty over charges of trafficking 396.2 gramsounces) of heroin.

His trial at Singapore's High Court ended Friday with judge Kan Ting Chiu retiring to deliberate.

Court officials were unable to say when Kan would give his verdict but Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer appealed Friday for Nguyen to be spared the death sentence.

"If people are involved in the drug trade in any way, shape or form then we are against that and countries are right to arrest and detain and prosecute people in those circumstances," Downer said.

"But on the other hand, we don't favour capital punishment so we have been trying to persuade the Singapore government that, if this Australian is convicted, we don't want him to face capital punishment."

The Singapore government rarely discusses in detail its capital punishment system.

But it released a wealth of data in a 19-page rebuttal of an Amnesty report put out two weeks ago that said the tiny island-state of just over four million people had the highest per capita execution rate in the world.

Amnesty said more than 400 people had been executed in Singapore over the past 10 years and alleged a disproportionate number of them were poor and uneducated, and many were foreigners.

The government did not give out the total number of people executed, preferring only to release specific figures for the past five years.

In its rejection of Amnesty's claim that the capital punishment laws ensnared the most vulnerable members of society, the government said 80 percent had received "formal education".

But graphs released as an appendix showed 51 percent of people executed over the past 10 years were cleaners, labourers, unskilled workers or unemployed.

Just two percent executed had vocational or tertiary training, while five percent were aged between 18 and 20.

The government repeated many of the assertions it made immediately after Amnesty's report, such as the death penalty was imposed only for the most serious crimes and that it helped make Singapore safe.

"The Singapore government makes no apology for its tough law and order system," the Homa Affairs Ministry said in the report.

"Singapore is widely acknowledged to have a transparent and fair justice system and is one of the safest places in the world to live and work."

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