Indonesian government declined last-minute and other appeals and carried out with the execution orders of the eight people who had been convicted of drug peddling, on Wednesday, although a Philippine woman was granted relief with a stay of execution.
Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo confirmed in his press statement later after the deaths had been widely reported that each of the eight had been executed simultaneously at 12:35 a.m. (1735 GMT) by a firing squad, consisting of 13 members. Medical officials confirmed their deaths three minutes later, he added in his statement.
“The executions have been successfully implemented, perfectly,” Prasetyo said. “All worked, no misses,” he said in regards to the deaths of the two Australian nationals, four Nigerians, a Brazilian and a local citizen.
Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, a woman involved in the actions, had been granted a stay of execution while the Philippines investigate her case.
The execution has left the world mourning with the heads of many nations describing this as ‘ruthless’ and ‘inhumane’. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia will withdraw its ambassador from Jakarta, as a mark of protest to the executions of two Australians, Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31. He further said that it was cruel because the duo had already spent about a decade in jail before being executed and “unnecessary because both of these young Australians were fully rehabilitated while in prison.” Also, the convicted had gone out of their way and helped many others in the prison, to make amendments for their crime.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff said in a statement the execution of a second Brazilian citizen in Indonesia this year “marks a serious event in the relations between the two countries.” Brazil had asked for a stay of execution for Rodrigo Gularte, 42, on humanitarian grounds because he was schizophrenic. However, the request had been declined by the Indonesian officials, stating that ”long-term” damage had already been caused. The accused had pleaded for mercy, but there had been none.
Meanwhile, Mary Jane Veloso’s mother, Celia, said that the stay of execution for her daughter was nothing less but a miracle for her. Spokesperson Herminio Coloma thanked Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo for giving ”due” consideration to the appeal of his Philippine counterpart, Benigno Aquino III. Prasetyo mentioned that Veloso was granted a stay of execution only because her ”alleged” boss has been arrested in the Philippines, and the officials there had requested the Indonesian assistance in investigations, also clearly stating that the stay did not mean to cancel the exception order.
Sukumaran and Chan requested that their corpses be flown back to their native country. Nigerian national Martin Anderson chose to be buried in the West Java town of Bekasi, and the other fellow Nigerian Raheem Agbaje, wished to be buried in the East Java town of Madiun where he had been a prisoner. The Indonesian citizen Zainal Abidin is to be buried in Cilacap. However, the wishes of two other Nigerians — Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise and Okwudili Oyatanze — as well as those of Gularte, the Brazilian, have yet to be announced to the public.
Originally, ten were to be executed, but French citizen Serge Atlaoui had been ”excluded” because he still had an outstanding court appeal against Jokowi’s rejection of his application. The government later reported that Atlaoui will ”face a firing squad alone if his appeal is rejected by the Administrative Court.”
Meanwhile, Jokowi’s predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, canceled a trip to Australia that had been scheduled sometime later this week because of growing anger about the executions. Nations worldwide have condemned this horrific act.
Tags: Drug traffickers execution Indonesia
