Jakarta: government set to execute 40 drug traffickers
The list of inmates on death row includes major figures in drug trafficking, Indonesia’s number one emergency. The date and place of the execution have not yet been decided. Chinese and French prisoners are on the list. Army officer caught at a drug-based party.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Indonesia is getting ready to execute 40 people, most of them sentenced to death for drug trafficking.
Attorney General HM Prasetyo made the announcement without disclosing the names of the prisoners to be put to death. The latter include major figures in drug trafficking, which Indonesian authorities have been fighting with harsh sentences.
The date of the executions has not yet been decided, but in his announcement, the attorney general hinted that it might be in May.
From the experience of past years, Praseyto said, "we realised that the months of the rainy season (January to April) are not the best ones. We still have not decided when or where." June and July are also inappropriate because it is the height of the fasting season.
According to local sources, the list of sentences includes the names of the ‘Tangerang nine’, a group of Indonesian, Chinese and French drug traffickers that set up the third ecstasy production facility in the world in Tangerang, west of Jakarta.
The gang leader, Benny Sudrajat, has been held in a maximum-security prison on Nusakambangan Island in Central Java for many years, but he has managed to run his drug business through his children who are still at large.
Indonesia has some of the harshest anti-drug laws in the world, to fight what President Joko Widodo has called a "national emergency".
For traffickers, the death sentence is carried out by a firing squad. Sixty-six executions were carried out between 1979 and 2015.
In April 2015, Indonesia was criticised for executing eight people, including two Australians.
On that occasion, Jakarta spared the life of Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, a 30-year-old house cleaner from the Philippines sentenced to death for drug trafficking.
Despite harsh measures, Indonesia’s prison system is plagued by graft, and very often police officers have been arrested for drug possession.
Last week, the military commander in Makasser, South Sulawesi, was caught red-handed at a drug-based party in a local hotel.
He had deployed soldiers to patrol the area. He is currently in prison awaiting trial.
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28/07/2016 11:44
12/05/2016 14:18
