robbing Fujii, for a total of 38 years' imprisonment. At that time, life imprisonment in Singapore was defined as a jail term of 20 years, with a one-third remission for good behaviour. In his judgement (which was referred to by the Court of Appeal), Justice Sinnathuray stated that Abdul Nasir had committed two serious offences, one of which was why he was initially remanded and that he committed the other offence while trying to make his escape from his cell. Sinnathuray J also stated that since the kidnapping charge was a separate and distinct offence from the first Abdul Nasir had committed at Oriental Hotel with Abdul Rahman, Sinnathuray J decided that Abdul Nasir would only begin to serve his sentence of life imprisonment when he finished the sentence of 18 years for the Oriental Hotel murder case. Despite the advice of his lawyer Subhas Anandan not to appeal, Abdul Nasir took upon himself to file an appeal for the two jail terms to run concurrently and argued the appeal on his own. The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal on 20 August 1997. Chief Justice Yong Pung How, who led the three-judge panel (also included M Karthigesu and L P Thean) in the appellate court, decided that life imprisonment would no longer be considered as a jail term of 20 years, with a one third remission for good behaviour but as a term of incarceration for the remainder of a convicted prisoner's natural life, with the possibility of parole only after serving at least 20 years. Yong CJ ruled that this amendment would only apply to future cases after 20 August 1997 and thus Abdul Nasir's life sentence would be not be affected. Regarding his second sentence, the three-judge panel held that due to the lack of any significant mitigating factors in Abdul Nasir's case, Justice Sinnathuray (who would retire from the Bench a month later on 23 September 1997) had not erred in sentencing Abdul Nasir to serve his sentences consecutively. The Court of Appeal further held that, due to the grievous nature of the crimes, a concurrent sentence would not be sufficiently deterrent to other would-be perpetrators. As, according to his current sentence, Abdul Nasir would only serve the maximum 20 years for his life sentence, the Court of Appeal held that it would be not be manifestly excessive for Abdul Nasir to serve his next term