Indonesia
executed four drug convicts Friday but 10 others due to face the firing squad
were given an apparent reprieve in a confused process one lawyer condemned as a
"complete mess".
The executions on a remote
prison island went ahead despite strong protests from international rights
groups, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union who had urged
Indonesia not to proceed.
Four inmates -- three
Nigerians and one Indonesian -- were put to death just after midnight. One of
the Nigerian prisoners was cremated hours later, while the bodies of the three
others were being prepared for burial.
Questions swirled about the
handling of the process, which saw the other 10 prisoners slated for death --
including from India, Pakistan and Zimbabwe -- spared at the last minute.
Authorities did not give a
reason for the reprieve, but the prison island where they were expected to be
executed in outdoor clearings was hit by a major storm as the other sentences
were carried out.
Attorney General Muhammad
Prasetyo said Friday the 10 inmates had been returned to their cells,
suggesting their executions were not imminent.
"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."
Local prisons chief
Molyanto, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said the major security
seen in recent days around the island had been reduced and he thought more
executions were unlikely in the near future.
Ricky Gunawan -- whose
client Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke was among those tied to a post and shot
in the jungle clearing -- said lawyers awaiting the grim news were kept in the
dark as to why the executions didn't proceed as planned.
"I would say the
execution this morning was a complete mess," Gunawan told AFP from
Cilacap, near Nusakambangan, a remote island housing several high-security
jails.
"No clear information
was provided to us about the time of execution, why only four (were executed)
and what happens to the 10 others."
Family members had already
been shocked to learn on Thursday morning that their relatives would be put to
death a day ahead of schedule.
Distraught relatives rushed
to Nusakambangan to say farewell to their loved ones.
- Process 'not respected' -
President Joko Widodo has
defended dramatically ramping up the use of capital punishment, saying that
Indonesia is fighting a war on drugs and that traffickers must be heavily
punished.
Friday's executions were
the third under Widodo since he took office in 2014. The last round was in
April 2015, when authorities put to death eight drug convicts, including two
Australians.
The executed Indonesian was
named as Freddy Budiman, while the three Nigerians were Seck Osmane, Humphrey
Jefferson Ejike Eleweke and Michael Titus Igweh.
Another of Eleweke's
lawyers, Afif Abdul Qoyim, told AFP the execution should not have gone ahead as
his client this week filed a legal appeal.
"When this process in
not respected, that means that this is no longer a country that upholds the
law, nor human rights," he said.
Amnesty International has
identified what it calls "systematic flaws" in the trials of several
of the death row inmates, and urged Indonesia not to proceed while appeals for
clemency were pending.
Two people whose cases had
raised high-profile international concern among rights groups were not
executed.
The first was Pakistani
Zulfiqar Ali, whom rights groups say was beaten into confessing to heroin
possession, leading to his 2005 death sentence.
The other was Indonesian
woman Merri Utami, who was caught with heroin in her bag as she came through
Jakarta airport and claims she was duped into becoming a drug mule.
The National Commission on
Violence Against Women, which has been lobbying for Utami to receive clemency,
called for answers over the fate of the 10 remaining prisoners.
"We hope the attorney
general's office will provide a clear and transparent explanation," the
commission's Sri Nurherwati told AFP.
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