INDONESIA executed four prisoners convicted for drug offenses on Friday, despite global calls this past week to put a halt to executions.
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The lawyer, Antonius Karwayu, who represented two of the convicts, said that the convicts could face a firing squad at the Nusa Kambangan prison complex off the coast of Java on Thursday.
Around 152 people remain on death row in Indonesia, including convicted drug traffickers from the Philippines, France and Britain, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
He had not been able to speak with Utami since the government announced the four executions and nor had her appointed spiritual adviser, a Catholic priest.
The executions were the third set carried out since President Joko Widodo took office in October 2014.
From Pakistan, a sister of Ali made an emotional appeal to the Indonesian authorities to review his case.
Authorities have not released a detailed list of the convicts who will face the firing squad but the Jakarta-based Community Legal Aid Institute said the group consists of four Indonesians, six Nigerians and one each from Pakistan, India, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir, however, defended the executions, saying death penalty does not violate any worldwide laws and it is still “a positive law in Indonesia”.
“Such death sentences are unlawful and tantamount to an arbitrary execution as they are undertaken in contravention of Indonesia’s worldwide human rights obligations”, the United Nations said in a statement on Thursday.
Lawyers and rights groups had raised serious doubts about the conviction of one of the Nigerians, Humphrey Jefferson, who is to be buried in Indonesia. “We are relieved that his life has been saved”, Nadeem told Geo News via telephone.
However, he said it was unclear so far whether the Indonesian government had abolished or postponed the death sentence of Zulfiqar Ali.
Attorney-General M. Prasetyo said the executions would be conducted early today and that all technical and legal aspects of the executions had been fulfilled.
No reason for the reprieve given to the other 10 inmates, but island was hit by a major storm as the other executions took place, according to BBC.
Indonesian officials have said all measures will be taken to prevent the drama surrounding the executions in April a year ago. But Rachmad did not say why the 10 other drug convicts were not executed.
Mr Syed Zahid Raza, deputy Pakistani ambassador in Jakarta, said the family of a Pakistani man, Zulfiqar Ali, had been informed he would be executed last night. Indian and Pakistani officials said they were making last-minute efforts to save their citizens.
The government has put more men to death in the last two years than it has in the previous decade.
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The government of Jokowi’s predecessor did not carry out executions between 2009 and 2012, but resumed them in 2013. Amnesty International estimates several thousand people are executed in China each year.
