AFP/Jakarta
Indonesia is ready to execute seven foreign drug convicts on death row after their appeals for presidential clemency were rejected, an official said, in a move certain to set Jakarta on a collision course with international allies.
The seven include two Australian leaders of the “Bali Nine” drug-smuggling gang, who have been on death row for almost a decade. The pair lost their appeals in December and earlier this month.
A spokesman for the attorney-general’s office revealed late Wednesday that a further five foreigners have also lost their appeals. He said four were from France, Brazil, Nigeria and Ghana.
Local media reported that the fifth was a Philippine woman, and the foreign ministry in Manila said it was working to prevent the execution.
Four Indonesians—only one of them convicted of drugs offences—had also lost their bid for clemency.
“The attorney general’s office now has 11 convicts on death row ready to be executed,” spokesman Tony Spontana said.
Indonesia earlier this month executed six drug offenders, including five foreigners, prompting a furious Brazil and the Netherlands—whose citizens were among those put to death—to recall their ambassadors.
Drug offenders from Vietnam, Malawi and Nigeria were also among those killed by firing squad.
Despite his image as a reformist, Indonesia’s new president Joko Widodo has been a vocal supporter of capital punishment for drug offenders, disappointing rights activists who had hoped that he would take a softer line on the death penalty.
He has repeatedly vowed to show no clemency to drug traffickers. In a CNN interview broadcast earlier this week, Widodo vowed: “We are not going to compromise for drug dealers. No compromise. No compromise.”
Spontana said a decision had not yet been made on when or where the convicts would be executed, only that more than one would face the firing squad in the next round.
The Frenchman is Serge Atlaoui, who has been on death row since 2007, Spontana confirmed.
In Sydney late Thursday, more than 2,000 Australians, led by local musicians, gathered in a plea for mercy for their compatriots facing imminent execution, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
Holding candles and signs reading “I stand for mercy”, the crowd listened to speeches and live music.
“Don’t kill him, please don’t kill him ... please, president, please forgive him,” Sukumaran’s grandmother Edith Visvanathan told the crowd between sobs.
The Australian pair were arrested in Bali in 2005 and sentenced to death the following year for attempting to smuggle 8kg of heroin out of the Indonesian holiday island.
The rejection of their clemency appeals removed the final hurdle to put the pair to death, as Indonesian authorities said they must be executed together as they had committed their crime together.
Lawyers for the pair are planning a last-ditch appeal to their convictions but the attorney-general’s office has said that further legal challenges are not possible once a clemency bid has been rejected.
The Frenchman Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 in a secret laboratory producing ecstasy close to Jakarta.
Australian Raji Sukumaran, the mother of death-row prisoner Myuran Sukumaran, leaves after visiting her son at Kerobokan Prison in Bali, Indonesia, ye
