Indonesia executes 4; 10 other drug convicts to face firing squad

An ambulance carrying the coffin of executed Indonesian drug convict, Freddy Budiman, leaves Wijayapura pier in Cilacap, Central Java province on July 29, 2016. (AFP)

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 that 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.”

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.