Duo to move to execution island today

JAKARTA: Two Australian men on death row in Indonesia for drug trafficking will be transferred today to an island prison where they are to be executed, an official said.

Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31, will be flown in military aircraft to Nusakambangan, a penal island off the southern coast of Java island, Momock Bambang Sumiarso, the chief prosecutor in Bali, where the Australians are held, said last night.

He did not say when they would be executed but the move indicates it is imminent.

The planned execution of Rodrigo Gularte, a Brazilian drug smuggler who is due to be executed along with Chan, Sukumaran and up to seven other convicts, could be postponed if he is found to be mentally ill, a news report cited Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla as saying.

“If he has a certain illness, he has to be treated first,” Mr Kalla was quoted as saying by the Media Indonesia newspaper.

Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo said last week that his office was seeking a second opinion on Gularte’s condition after a psychiatrist appointed by his lawyers certified him to be schizophrenic.

Prasetyo said Gularte could still be executed under Indonesian law regardless of his present condition on the grounds that he was mentally sound when he was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for smuggling cocaine into Indonesia.

President Joko Widodo has rejected clemency requests from at least 16 convicted drug traffickers since he took office in October.

But lawyers for some of the convicts said Mr Widodo had failed to examine individual cases and take rehabilitation and good conduct into consideration.

Six of them were executed in January, in a move that drew protests from Brazil and the Netherlands, whose nationals were among those put to death.

Inmates expected to be executed this month include three Nigerians and one each from the Philippines, France, Indonesia and Ghana.

Australia and Brazil have appealed to Mr Widodo to show mercy, without success.