Alan Shadrake

On 10 April 2011, Shadrake appealed against his sentence. The Court of Appeal affirmed the original sentence on 27 May 2011 and he was jailed on 1 June. He was unable to pay the fine and his sentence was therefore increased by a default two weeks' jail to a total of eight weeks. On 9 July, he was released early 'for good behaviour' and deported back to Britain.

Before Shadrake's book was published, Yale University had plans to establish a liberal arts college (Yale-NUS) in conjunction with the National University of Singapore. Four Yale professors took issue with the question of academic freedom in a nation that hinders freedom of expression and, in light of the Shadrake verdict, asked the University administrators to reconsider establishing the college. They were unsuccessful, and Yale-NUS opened its doors in 2011.

Shadrake was arrested on charges of 'criminal defamation' on 18 July 2010, a day after the publication of his book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which attacked the Singapore judicial system.

On 2 November 2010, a verdict of guilty of contempt of court was rendered by High Court Judge Quentin Loh. Shadrake subsequently apologised if he had offended the sensitivities of the judiciary and did not mean to undermine the judges or the judiciary. The prosecutors felt that the apology was insincere and intended to lighten the sentence from the court. On 16 November, Shadrake was sentenced to six weeks in prison and fined S$20,000.

In 2005, Shadrake interviewed and wrote about Darshan Singh, Singapore's executioner for nearly 50 years, in The Australian, causing a minor controversy as it was shortly before the execution of Van Tuong Nguyen. Details from further interviews with Singh were included in Once a Jolly Hangman.

Shadrake was born in Essex in England. After working with several local weeklies and a news agency in Bolton, Lancashire, he joined the Daily Express in Manchester. He resigned in 1962 to freelance in West Berlin six months after the Berlin Wall was built and stayed until 1967. He returned to freelance in London and to start writing his first book The Yellow Pimpernels: Escape Stories of the Berlin Wall. In 1984 he moved to Santa Monica, California, where he freelanced with Star, Globe and the National Enquirer as well as UK and Australian magazines and tabloids. After his third marriage to a Korean American ended in disaster in 1997 he moved to Las Vegas. In 2002 he was invited by the Singapore government to write travel features to attract American tourists - and stayed to marry his fourth wife - this time a Chinese Singaporean. While freelancing for Australian and UK publications he began researching his Once a Jolly Hangman book which resulted in his arrest in 2010.

Alan Shadrake (born mid-1934) is a British author and former journalist, who was convicted in Singapore in 2010 of contempt of court for scandalising the Singapore judicial system, through his published views on the country's criminal justice system. Following a failed appeal, he served 5½ weeks in prison.