Jakarta executes 4 drug convicts
CILACAP, Indonesia—Indonesia executed four people convicted of drug crimes yesterday despite international protests and said it would decide later when as many as 10 others are put to death.
One Indonesian and three Nigerians were executed by firing squad not long after midnight local time as torrential rains hit the Nusa Kambangan prison island where the death row inmates were held.
The government had said earlier in the week that 14 people on death row, mostly foreigners, would be executed for drug crimes.
Those executed were Indonesian Freddy Budiman and Nigerians Seck Osmane, Michael Titus and Humphrey Jefferson.
One Indonesian and three Nigerians executed by firing squad
Relatives, rights groups and foreign governments had urged Indonesia to spare all 14 lives but it was unclear whether that had any influence on the decision to not carry out all the executions at once.
Legitimacy
Lawyers and rights groups had raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of the conviction of Jefferson, who had been in prison for more than a decade, as well as the convictions of an Indonesian woman Merri Utami and a Pakistani man Zulfikar Ali.
Ricky Gunawan, a lawyer from Com- munity Legal Aid Institute who represented Jefferson and Utami, said there had been no explanation from officials at Nusa Kambangan about the decision to execute only some of the prisoners.
But he said it was telling that Africans were eight of the 10 foreigners on the execution list and three of the four killed.
“They felt they were targeted by the government of Indonesia only because they are Nigerians, only because they are Africans, and their governments did not do anything” to help them, he said.
“They felt they became an easy target to execute.”
It was the third set of executions under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo who was elected in 2014 and campaigned on promises to improve human rights in Indonesia.
Last year, Jokowi’s government executed 14 people convicted of drug crimes, mostly foreigners, sparking a huge outcry abroad, and particularly in Australia, which had two citizens among those condemned.
The latest executions did not attract the same level of media attention abroad but the European Union, UN Human Rights Office, Australian government and others continued to speak out against Indonesia’s use of the death penalty.
Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo told a news conference yesterday that the severity of the drug crimes and exhaustion of all appeals was a consideration in the execution of the four men.
A decision about other executions would be announced at a later time, he said.