Indonesia on Thursday rejected mounting worldwide pressure and desperate pleas from relatives to halt the execution of 14 drug convicts who are expected to imminently face the firing squad.
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“We considered several factors and decided that for now four death row inmates would be executed”, Noor Rachmad, an official at the attorney general’s office, told reporters shortly after Friday’s executions.
The latest executions did not attract the same level of media attention overseas but the European Union, United Nations Human Rights Office, Australian government and others continued to speak out against Indonesia’s use of the death penalty.
Last year, Indonesia executed 14 death row inmates, many of them foreigners convicted for drug offenses.
Reuters reported that the rights activists and governments have again called on Indonesia to abolish the death penalty but those calls have gone unheeded.
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.
Amnesty International condemned the latest executions and said it is a “deplorable act that violated the local and international law”.
Ricky Gunawan, a lawyer from Community Legal Aid Institute who represented Jefferson and Utami, said the government’s unpredictable handling of the process was “tantamount to torture” for those who had been prepared to die.
Ban recalled that under global law, the death penalty should be used for the “most serious crimes” and said “drug crimes are generally not considered to meet this threshold”.
“No clear information was provided to us about the time of execution, why only four [were executed] and what happens to the 10 others”, he told AFP.
The Federal Government In a statement made available to the press yesterday said, ” though three of them have since been executed, we are still pleading on behalf of the remaining three.
In fact, despite its draconian approach to drug smuggling and trafficking, Indonesia had executed relatively few prisoners in recent years, reports the New York Times, “despite having dozens of convicts on death row”. Although the death penalty – especially for cases related to drug trafficking – is widely criticized overseas, there actually exists widespread support among the Indonesian population for the executions of drug traffickers.
The number was much less than the fourteen originally expected to be executed, with the Attorney General Office saying the other ten prisoners would face a firing squad at a later date.
Sister of the Pakistani convict expressed happiness over halting of her brother’s execution and said she was thankful to all the nation for their prayers.
“The executions are only aimed at halting drug crimes”. His 2-year-old administration will have executed more people than were executed in the previous decade.
“Even in a ideal judicial system, some mistakes can still be made”, he said, while insisting that Ali had received an unfair trial.
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“The Jakarta Post sincerely apologises to all our readers, particularly to all those affected by the story, for this major failure”, he said.
