Reports also indicated that advisers whp comfort and guidance to prisoners in their final hours – had also been issued with fresh name tags, allowing them access to the prison island the executions will be carried out. Previously, the attorney-general’s office has said it has budgeted funds for up to 16 executions this year.
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Among them, Pakistani Zulfiqar Ali who says he was forced to confess and not given a translator during his trial, Indonesian Merri Utami whom activists say is an innocent drug courier, and Michael Titus Igweh, a Nigerian who says he was electrocuted under police custody.
In a statement, Attorney General M Prasetyo said the executions of the 14 death row inmates would be conducted early on Friday.
“Authorities say they will execute him”.
Indonesia’s prosecutors have always stressed that only death row convicts who have exhausted all legal avenues are put on the execution list.
“The increasing use of the death penalty in Indonesia is terribly worrying and I urge the government to immediately end this practice which is unjust and incompatible with human rights”, he said in a statement. The E.U. called on Indonesia’s President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to “consider joining the wide community of over 140 states that have abolished the death penalty entirely or have adopted a moratorium”.
Of the more than 1,600 publicly announced executions a year ago, Amnesty says almost 90 percent of them were in three countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran.
Indonesia has a strong record of fighting for the rights of its citizens overseas on death row but that is a position the authorities do not consistently uphold at home, where President Widodo has claimed the death penalty is needed to deter drug crime, Amnesty said.
It said that the lacunas found in the trial of Zulfiqar convinced Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to order for an inquiry by a committee of Ministry of Law and Human Rights in 2010. His 2-year-old administration will have executed more people than were executed in the previous decade. The sister of a Pakistani man convicted of drug crimes has appealed the Indonesian government to spare the life of her ailing brother who is expected to be executed by a firing squad along with 12 others in the next 48 hours.
“The death penalty is not an effective deterrent relative to other forms of punishment nor does it protect people from drug abuse”.
Human rights groups have criticized this practice and argued that numerous cases of prisoners on death row in Indonesia are marked by questionable and inhumane practices, including beatings, torture and forced confessions. It said that Indonesian police used violent duress to obtain a confession from Ali, who was arrested in November 2004.
Jokowi’s predecessor ended a moratorium on executions in 2013.
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