Heroin smugglers die by firing squad on jungle island
WEARING body armour and helmets, an Indonesian firing squad is ferried to a jungle island yesterday to carry out the executions of nine heroin smugglers.
The sentences were carried out on Nusa Kambangan – known as Execution Island – with only one reprieve being granted. Australians Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 33, were the first to die.
A British grandmother, Lindsay Sandiford, is expected to be executed within months. The 58-year- old was sentenced to death two years ago after being caught with £1.6million of cocaine in her suitcase.
Mrs Sandiford, from Cheltenham, reportedly told a friend she was heartbroken at the news about Chan, who she is understood to have befriended in jail. ‘If they kill someone as good as Andrew, what hope is there for me?’ she said. ‘I just want to get it over with. I feel like just giving up.’
Indonesia, which has now carried out 15 such executions in four months, has vowed to kill all of its 58 foreign drug convicts by the end of the year.
Chan and Sukumaran led the ‘Bali Nine’ heroin gang convicted ten years ago.
The others executed yesterday include a Frenchman, a Ghana-
‘I want to get it over with’
ian, an Indonesian, three Nigerians and a Brazilian. Mary Jane Veloso of the Philippines was given a last-minute reprieve.
Muhammad Prasetyo, Indonesia’s attorney general, said Veloso was granted a stay of execution because her alleged boss has been arrested in the Philippines, and the authorities there requested Indonesian assistance in pursuing the case. ‘This delay did not cancel the execution,’ he added. ‘We just want to give a chance in relation with the legal process in the Philippines.’
Veloso’s mother, Celia, told Manila radio station DZBB that what had happened was a ‘mira- cle’. ‘ We thought we’ve lost my daughter. I thank God,’ she said.
Chan’s brother Michael reacted with anger to news of the executions. ‘I have just lost a courageous brother to a flawed Indonesian legal system. I miss you already. RIP my little brother,’ he tweeted.
Chan became a Christian pastor during his decade in prison and Australian authorities showed this meant he had been reformed.
The United Nations has argued that the crimes of the nine – possession of heroin, marijuana or cocaine – were not egregious enough to warrant the ultimate punishment. Mrs Sandiford says she was coerced into smuggling cocaine from Bangkok to Bali by a crime syndicate who had threatened her sons.
She had since taken part in a police sting that led to the arrest of the syndicate’s leaders, but was sentenced to death despite a prosecution recommendation that she serve 17 years
The alleged leader of the syndicate, 44-year-old former antiques dealer Julian Ponder, from Brighton, was jailed for six years.
A website and Facebook page launched in Mrs Sandiford’s name to fund a retrial had by yesterday raised around £2,000 of the tens of thousands of pounds needed for a legal challenge to go ahead.
The British government has refused to fund her legal battle.