Indonesia today executed four drug convicts, three of them foreigners, by firing squad. The remaining 10 convicts, expected to have faced the firing squad, including nationals from Pakistan, India and Zimbabwe as well as Indonesians, were not put to death.
"This was done not in order to take lives but to stop evil intentions, and the evil act of drug trafficking," Noor Rachmad, deputy attorney general for general crimes, said.
Officials did not give a reason for the reprieve, but the prison island where they were expected to be executed was hit by a major storm as the other sentences were carried out.
The executed Indonesian was named as Freddy Budiman, while the three others, Nigerians, were: Seck Osmane, Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke and Michael Titus Igweh.
It was the first round of executions in Indonesia since April last year when authorities put to death eight drug convicts, including two Australians, which sparked international outrage.
The executions came after days of protests with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union voicing opposition to the plan.
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 the crime of 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.
It was the third batch of executions under President Joko Widodo, and means 18 drug convicts (mostly foreigners) have been put to death since he became leader in 2014.
Indian national, Gurdip Singh, who was among the 14 people, were placed in isolation on a prison island where Jakarta carries out executions.
Singh, 48, was found guilty of trying to smuggle 300 grams of heroin into Indonesia in 2004 and was sentenced to death by a state district court at Tanggerang in Banten province in February 2005. He was given the death sentence even though prosecutors had recommended a 20-year jail term for Singh, who is also known as Vishal and belongs to Jalandhar in Punjab.
With PTI Inputs
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