CILACAP: Indonesia executed only four of the 14 convicted drug traffickers who were supposed to face the firing squad early on Friday because officials decided that a “comprehensive review” was needed to “avoid any mistake” in the other 10 cases, Attorney General H. Muhammad Prasetyo said.
The date for the next round of executions had not been set, he told reporters in Jakarta.
Zulfiqar Ali, a Pakistani, was among the 10 convicts who were taken to Cilacap, near Nusakambangan, a remote island housing several high-security jails, for execution, but were spared minutes before the firing was to take place.
Zulfiqar Ali and an Indonesian woman have applied for presidential clemency, their representatives said. They said legal proceedings could take a long time.
Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo said: “The fate of the other 10 we will determine later. We will see when the right time will be,” Prasetyo told reporters.
“But one thing is for sure — we will never stop executing people on death row.”
Those executed — three Nigerians and an Indonesian — were shot dead during a thunderstorm shortly after midnight. Rights activists and governments have again called on Indonesia to abolish the death penalty.
Those calls have gone unheeded and President Joko Widodo has said drugs pose as serious a threat as terrorism.
Amnesty International called the latest executions “a deplorable act that violates international and Indonesian law” and pleaded that the other death sentences not be carried out.
Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2016
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