Yahoo – AFP, Muhammad Azka, July 28, 2016
Cilacap (Indonesia) (AFP) - Indonesia Friday executed four drug convicts, three of them foreigners, by firing squad, an official said, drawing swift condemnation as Jakarta pushes on with its tough campaign of capital punishment.
Indonesian men light candles during an anti-execution rally in front of the presidential palace in Jakarta on July 28, 2016 (AFP Photo/Bay Ismoyo) |
Cilacap (Indonesia) (AFP) - Indonesia Friday executed four drug convicts, three of them foreigners, by firing squad, an official said, drawing swift condemnation as Jakarta pushes on with its tough campaign of capital punishment.
Ten others
expected to have faced the firing squad, including nationals from Pakistan,
India and Zimbabwe as well as Indonesians, were not put to death but officials
said they would be executed at a later stage.
Authorities
did not give a reason for the reprieve, but the prison island where they were
expected to be executed in outdoor clearings was hit by a major storm as the
other sentences were carried out.
The
executions, which saw an Indonesian and three Nigerians face the firing squad,
were the first in the country since April last year when authorities put to
death eight drug convicts, including two Australians.
President
Joko Widodo has defended dramatically ramping up the use of capital punishment,
saying that Indonesia is fighting a war on drugs and traffickers must be
heavily punished.
Noor
Rachmad, deputy attorney general for general crimes, said the latest executions
were "done not in order to take lives but to stop evil intentions, and the
evil act of drug trafficking".
He added
that "the rest (of the executions) will be carried out in stages",
saying that the timings had not yet been decided.
Amnesty
International condemned the executions, with the group's Rafendi Djamin
labelling them "a deplorable act".
"Any
executions that are still to take place must be halted immediately. The
injustice already done cannot be reversed, but there is still hope that it
won't be compounded," he said.
The UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon and the European Union had also voiced opposition to the plan in
recent days.
Friday's
executions, which happened at 12:45 am (1745 GMT Thursday), came after a day of
frenetic activity, with distraught relatives travelling to Nusakambangan island
to say farewells to their loved ones and ambulances carrying coffins over to
the heavily guarded penal colony.
Relatives
carry photographs of Pakistani national Zulfiqar Ali, who was
sentenced to
death in 2005 for heroin possession in Indonesia, during a
protest in Lahore on
July 28, 2016 (AFP Photo/Arif Ali)
|
Execution
drive
The
executed Indonesian was named as Freddy Budiman, while the three Nigerians
were: Seck Osmane, Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke and Michael Titus Igweh.
Eleweke's
lawyer, Afif Abdul Qoyim, told AFP the execution should not have gone ahead as
his client this week filed a legal appeal.
"When
this process in not respected, that means that this is no longer a country that
upholds the law, nor human rights," he said.
Two people
whose cases had raised high-profile international concern among rights groups
were not executed.
The first
was Pakistani Zulfiqar Ali, whom rights groups say was beaten into confessing
to the crime of heroin possession, leading to his 2005 death sentence.
Syed Zahid
Raza, the deputy Pakistani ambassador in Indonesia, hailed his reprieve as a
victory and said it was due to diplomatic efforts in Jakarta and Islamabad.
The other
was Indonesian woman Merri Utami, who was caught with heroin in her bag as she
came through Jakarta airport and claims she was duped into becoming a drug
mule.
At Cilacap,
the city closest to Nusakambangan, family members were initially shocked to
learn on Thursday morning their relatives would be executed in a matter of
hours, having initially thought it would take place a day later.
Some
distressed relatives protested their loved ones' innocence, while 10 women's
rights activists rallying in support of Utami were detained.
It was the
third batch of executions under Widodo, and means 18 drug convicts -- mostly
foreigners -- have been put to death since he became leader in 2014.
His
execution drive has shocked the international community and disappointed
activists, particularly as hopes were high that Widodo, seen as a fresh face in
a political world dominated by figures from Indonesia's authoritarian past,
would improve the country's rights record.
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