CILACAP: The Indonesian government said on Friday (Thursday night in Pakistan) that it had executed four drug traffickers, giving a reprieve of uncertain duration to 10 others.

Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani, was among the 10 who got the reprieve.

Deputy Attorney-General Noor Rachmad said one Indonesian and three Nigerians were executed by firing squad shortly after midnight local time. He said the government had not decided when the other executions would take place.

Earlier this week, Indonesia’s attorney-general had said 14 people, mostly foreigners, would be executed. Relatives, rights groups and governments had urged Jakarta to spare their lives.

This was the third set of executions under President Joko Widodo, who was elected in 2014 and campaigned on promises to improve human rights in Indonesia.—AP

Dawn’s Islamabad Bureau adds: The Foreign Office said in a statement (issued a few hours before the time slated for the executions) that it was continuing to make efforts to save Zulfiqar from the gallows.

Speaking at a press briefing, FO spokesman Nafees Zakaria said the issue had been raised “appropriately through diplomatic channels as well as at the political level”.

“Rest assured we have made all efforts. Our efforts are continuing and we will not lose hope,” he added.

Review petitions against the death sentence handed down to Zulfiqar Ali were filed twice but they were rejected, the spokesman said.

A demonstration against the planned execution was held in front of the Indonesian consulate in Karachi, and members of his family led another one in Lahore.

People took to social media in large numbers to call on the government to intervene in the case.

A petition started by Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), an NGO, was also shared widely.

In a live television interview, Ali appealed directly to the country’s leadership, calling upon them to “at least look at my case”.

According to JPP, neglect in Ali’s case was so apparent that a team of Indonesia’s law and human rights ministry had commissioned a report to investigate it in 2009.

Echoing the findings of this report, the commissioner of the National Commission on Human Rights, Dr Hafid Abbas, said he was “sure that Zulfiqar is innocent”, and recommended the cancellation of the death sentence.

According to the JPP statement, the sole basis for Ali’s conviction remained a “confession coerced out of him after 72 hours of brutal police torture”.

“The statement that implicated Zulfiqar in the crime was also recanted.

“He has been on death row in Indonesia for over 12 years... and [because he was very sick] he was in hospital right up to his execution notice.”

Maryam Haq, a director at JPP, said: “If the Pakistani leadership wants justice for an innocent citizen, it needs to step in now. High-level diplomatic intervention needs to move past lip-service and into action. If not, the government will have to answer to the public how they could let him be killed, knowing he was innocent.”

Pleas rejected: The Indonesian government on Thursday had brushed aside international pressure and desperate pleas from relatives to halt the execution of the drug convicts.

President Joko Widodo believes his country faces an emergency due to rising drugs consumption and has dramatically escalated the use of capital punishment, putting to death 14 drug convicts, mostly foreigners, since he took power in 2014.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon led international condemnation, urging Widodo to halt the executions and declare a moratorium on death penalty.

Mr Ban recalled that under international law, the death penalty should be used for the most serious crimes and said “drug crimes are generally not considered to meet this threshold”.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called upon Indonesia to end the “unjust” use of the death penalty and the European Union has also urged a halt.

But Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir defended the planned executions as “pure law enforcement”.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2016