Indonesia Friday executed four drug convicts, three of
them foreigners, by firing squad, an official said,
drawing swift condemnation from rights groups as
Jakarta pushes on with its 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.
"This was done not in order to take lives but to
stop evil intentions, and the evil act of drug
trafficking," Noor Rachmad, deputy attorney general
for general crimes, told reporters.
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."
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the
European Union had also voiced opposition to the
plan in recent days.
It was the first round of executions in Indonesia
since April last year when authorities put to death
eight drug convicts, including two Australians, which
sparked international outrage.
Friday's executions 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.
- Execution drive -
The executed Indonesian was named as Freddy
Budiman, while the three others, 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 President
Joko Widodo, and means 18 drug convicts -- mostly
foreigners -- have been put to death since he
became leader in 2014.
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.
But 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.