[Kabar-indonesia] Indonesia to execute 16 drug offenders, including 10 foreigners

[Joyo at aol.com]

Agence France-Presse
Wednesday June 28, 2006

Indonesia to execute 16 drug offenders, including 10 foreigners

Indonesian authorities are preparing to execute 16 people, including 10 
foreigners from Africa and Asia, who are on death row for drug trafficking, an 
official has said.

"The prosecutors' office has already made preparation for the execution of 16 
people on the death row for drug trafficking," said an official at the 
attorney general's office.

She cited Attorney General Spokesman I Wayan Pasek as saying that the 16 
convicts were all sentenced to death for drug trafficking and had exhausted every 
legal avenue of appeal.

Pasek's comment came after the head of the country's National Anti-drug 
Agency, I Made Mangku Pastika, on Sunday called for prosecutors to expedite the 
executions of key drug traffickers.

The 16 include seven Nigerians, one each from Nepal, Malawi and Thailand, and 
six Indonesians, the official said. There were three women among them, two 
from Indonesia and one from Thailand.

Another 27 death-row drug convicts are still in the process of appealing 
their verdicts.

Meanwhile, the Koran Tempo daily said that a district court in Tanggerang, 
just west of Jakarta, on Tuesday opened the trial of eight people involved in 
the mass production of ecstasy pills.

The eight, who were arrested following a raid on an ecstasy factory in Banten 
province in November, all face the death sentence, the daily said.

The separate trial of five other people in the same case will open soon, the 
daily said.

Executions in Indonesia are carried out by firing squad, and always held in 
secret and isolated locations.

Indonesia executed two foreign drug traffickers in 2004 and two murderers in 
2005, but prior to 2004 had often indefinitely delayed executions.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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