Jakarta---Eight foreigners and a Indonesian facing execution on a prison island are believed to be spending their last hours Tuesday before they are led into a clearing, tied to posts, and shot by firing squad.
Despite international outrage and desperate appeals for mercy from relatives, Jakarta looks set to execute the group, who include nationals from Australia, Brazil, Nigeria and the Philippines, as early as Tuesday night.
Under Indonesian regulations the eight men and one woman will be given the option of sitting, kneeling or standing as they meet their fate. The position of their hearts will be marked on their clothes in black ink to provide a target for the 12-man firing squad.
If the convict survives the initial volley of gunfire, then an officer delivers a shot to the head with a handgun.
Here are key questions and answers about the process:
Q: Where do the executions take place?
A: Indonesia executes death row inmates at Nusakambangan, a rugged island off Central Java that has served as a high-security jail since Dutch colonial rule.
Among the more notorious inmates to spend their final days there were Imam Samudra, Mukhlas and Amrozi, three men behind the 2002 bombings on the resort island of Bali that killed 202 people. They were put to death there in 2008.
Those sentenced to death are eventually transferred to Nusakambangan.
Q: How much notification do prisoners receive before being shot?
A: Authorities must provide a minimum 72 hours' notice. Once this is given, the prisoners are moved to isolation cells to wait. If they are foreigners their governments are informed of the impending execution.
Q: What happens next?
A: One hour before the scheduled execution time, a team of 12 specially trained policemen assembles at the site.
They take position five to ten metres (16 to 32 feet) from where the condemned inmates will be positioned and lay out their rifles.
A commander loads each rifle with one round but only three of the rounds are live. The rest are blanks, meaning it cannot be determined who fired the fatal shot.
Prisoners sentenced to death for the same crime -- like the two Australian ringleaders of the so-called "Bali Nine" heroin-smuggling gang -- must by law be executed at the same time but by a different firing squad.
It is not known how many firing squads will be used and into what number of groups the convicted will be divided.
AFP
