CILACAP: Eight drug-trafficking convicts from several countries were executed by an Indonesian firing squad shortly after midnight yesterday, local media said, but a Filipina who was on death row with them was unexpectedly spared at the last minute.
There was no immediate official confirmation from Indonesia that the eight men had been executed, though a lawyer for two Australians among the group said they had both been shot dead. The Brazilian government also confirmed one of its citizens had been killed as well, saying it was shocked by the second execution of a Brazilian in Indonesia in three months despite President Dilma Rousseff’s personal humanitarian appeals.
Earlier, Jakarta rejected last-ditch pleas from around the world for clemency to be granted to the drug traffickers from Nigeria, Australia, Brazil and Indonesia, ordering their mass execution to proceed within hours. A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office said it had delayed the execution of Mary Jane Veloso, a housemaid and mother of two who was arrested in 2010 after she arrived in Indonesia with 2.6 kg of heroin hidden in her suitcase. He said the delay came in response to a request from Manila after an employment recruiter, whom Veloso had accused of planting the drugs in her luggage, gave herself up to police in the Philippines on Tuesday. See also page 12Reuters
