Islanders Magazine

Indonesia Executes Four Nigerian Drug Traffickers



Defying intense pressure from the international community, the government executed eight death row prisoners early on Wednesday (local time) on Nusakambangan prison island near Cilacap in Central Java.
The Eight drug convicts were executed by an Indonesian firing squad but a Filipina who was on death row with the Australians, Nigerians, a Brazilian and an Indonesian was unexpectedly not among them, local media reports said
The eight were Indonesian Zainal Abidin, Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, Nigerians Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Raheem Agbaje Salami and Okwudili Oyatanze, Ghanaian Martin Anderson.
“We’ve carried out the executions,” said an Attorney General’s Office (AGO) official, talking to the press on condition of anonymity.
Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines was spared after a woman who allegedly recruited her to act as a drug courier gave herse
lf up to police in the Philippines on Tuesday.
AGO spokesman Tony Spontana said the government had agreed to the final requests fielded by two Australian death-row convicts for their bodies to be flown to Australia for burial.
A Cilacap Police officer said that after the executions, prayers were said for each person according to their respective religion. “The executions went well, without any disruptions,” he said.
The AGO stated that the executions had been carried out after it had heard all eight convicts’ final requests.
The execution was the second round after the first was carried out on Jan. 18, during which six inmates from Indonesia, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nigeria, Vietnam and Malawi were killed by firing squad. (ren)