Those words pretty well sum up the tone of Van’s police statement, which 16 months later was tendered in evidence to the Singapore High Court. Reading through it now, it is impossible not to conclude that the hopelessly naive and immature Van was the perfect patsy. He was desperate to make fast money but unlike most of the other suckers, the cash wasn’t for him. Van wasn’t greedy or trying to feed a drug habit but one thing seems clear, his overdeveloped sense of responsibility for his identical twin Khoa has landed him on death row.

Van, who had no criminal record, decided to act as a ­courier between Cambodia and Australia for a Sydney-based drug ­syndicate so he could repay the $25,000 in legal debts owed by his only brother. Unlike Van, who had completed Year 12 and had ambitions to study computer science at university, Khoa Nguyen had left school early and then in 1999 was convicted of possessing and trafficking heroin. Van, who was working as a salesman, took on his brother’s debts. For three years, he struggled to meet the repayments, just managing to keep up with the interest on one of his brother’s loans. But then he lost his job as a sales marketing executive. And there were other bills to pay including most of the rent for the house he shared with five friends in suburban Melbourne. Apparently they knew Van was a soft touch, too. So the young man, who had never travelled overseas, took a gamble and agreed to act as a mule. He told the Singapore police he knew exactly what he was doing. But as he explained to them during his interrogation, “I did not intend to let my twin brother know that I am repaying his debt. I was really desperate.”

By all accounts, Van and Khoa have always been close. They were born in a Thai refugee camp in 1980 after their mother Kim Nguyen fled Vietnam. They arrived in Australia as refugees four months later. They grew up in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, their single mother working two jobs, sewing at night and packing ice-cream during the day. His friends say Van was an ordinary suburban kid who loved playing tennis and joined a Vietnamese scout troop. He wasn’t a brilliant student but was well liked. Interestingly, he now claims to recall little of his childhood although he did tell Singapore police that the Vietnamese-Australian man his mother married in 1987 used to beat him and his brother “quite often”. All too late, the boys’ father showed up in Australia from the US searching for his sons only a month before Van took off on his drug run.

You don’t have to read between the lines of the trial transcripts to realise just what a bumbling novice he was. The brutal tactics of the Phnom Penh syndicate heavies, including forcing him to smoke heroin, terrified him. He was in too deep but, as he told police, he also knew he would be killed if he didn’t do what he was told. He spent three days wandering around the Cambodian capital, buying fake watches and cheap belts as presents. He admitted he paid prostitutes – not for sex, but for companionship. He hired a car and, after one botched attempt, crossed the border into Vietnam. He went sightseeing in Ho Chi Minh City for two days before returning to Phnom Penh to complete his mission. He didn’t know how to grind the rocks of heroin in the coffee grinder he’d been given and had trouble strapping the two plastic bags of powder onto his body. By the time he stepped into the transit lounge at Changi, he’d ripped one of the packages off because he was having trouble breathing. He simply slung it in his backpack. As he rushed through the airport to make his connecting flight to Australia, the house of cards collapsed. “I walked through the metal detector and, as I was crossing, it beeped. At that point in time, I knew I was going to be caught,” he said.

Nearly three years on, Van has, like many others on death row, turned to religion for comfort. He has been baptised and has spent much of his time comforting other condemned prisoners. He has written letters to his closest friends in Australia, reassuring them that ­“everything will be all right”.

Of course, it won’t.

His mother is bereft, about to set off on a journey no mother should have to make. Her other boy, who has been a virtual recluse since the arrest, is also making the trip to Singapore.

Kim Nguyen has said little publicly until the past few weeks. Her English is poor and her pain unimaginable. But everyone in Australia understood when she said: “Every time I go to see Van, I tell him mummy loves him very much. He is my heart. If something happens to my son, my heart will be stopped.”

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