Indonesia Moves to Execute Foreign Convicts
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Version 0 of 1. JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia on Friday summoned officials from the embassies of nine foreigners sentenced to die for drug trafficking to a prison island to receive notice that the convicts would soon be executed, despite international condemnation. The embassies of Australia, France, Brazil, the Philippines and Nigeria were told to send representatives Saturday to Nusa Kambangan Island, off the southern coast of Java, to receive 72-hour notice of the executions as required by law, said Tony Spontana, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office. But an exact date for the executions has not been set, Mr. Spontana said. The attorney general’s office is waiting for Indonesia’s Supreme Court to rule on an appeal request from Zainal Abidin, the only Indonesian member of a group of 10 condemned drug convicts, he said. “The time of execution is approaching,” Mr. Spontana said. “We’re giving 72 hours’ notice, but it could be longer because we are still waiting on Zainal’s decision.” The executions are to be carried out by firing squad. The Indonesian news media reported that one of the 10 condemned prisoners, Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines, was moved on Friday morning from a women’s prison in Central Java to Pasir Putih prison on Nusa Kambangan, where the other nine were already being held. Last month, the Indonesian Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Ms. Veloso, who argued that she had not had a qualified interpreter during her trial for smuggling heroin. The other nine convicts have been waiting on the island for weeks to hear word of their fate, amid a flurry of 11th-hour legal appeals and behind-the-scenes diplomacy. The Australian, French and Brazilian governments, along with the United Nations and the European Union, have all denounced the planned executions and urged the Indonesian government not to carry them out. But President Joko Widodo declared in November that Indonesia was facing a “national emergency” because of drug abuse, citing figures — which many have criticized as suspect — that more than four million Indonesians were drug-dependent and that 40 died every day from drug-related causes. In January, Mr. Joko’s government swiftly executed six inmates, including five foreigners who had been convicted of smuggling drugs into the country. In February, it announced a second round of executions as part of a plan to clear Indonesia’s death row of its remaining 64 drug convicts, 58 of whom are foreigners, by the end of 2015. The two most high-profile condemned prisoners are Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 34, members of the so-called Bali Nine group of Australians who were arrested in 2005 trying to smuggle 18.5 pounds of heroin out of the Indonesian resort island and back home. Fatimah Farwin, the Indonesian wife of Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise, a 47-year-old Nigerian convicted in 2004 of smuggling heroin into the country who is among the 10 scheduled for imminent execution, said she last saw him on Thursday, one of two scheduled visiting days. “He’s scared, he’s worrying because he is wondering when it might happen,” she said. |