T

he Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) announced three convicted murderers were executed at Nusakambangan Penitentiary in Cilacap, Central Java, early on Friday morning.

'€œThe executions were carried out at 0:00 a.m.,'€ junior attorney for General Crimes Mahfud Manan said in Jakarta on Friday, as quoted by Antara news agency.

Suryadi, one of the convicts, from Palembang, South Sumatra, was found guilty of killing a whole family in 1991, while the two others, Jurit and Ibrahim, were convicted of murder in Musi Banyuasin regency also in South Sumatra in 1997.

Their petition for clemency was rejected in 2003 by then president Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Head of the corrections division of the Law and Human Rights Ministry'€™s Central Java office, Suwarso, said the execution was conducted at Lembah Nirbaya, Kebun Jeruk compound, Nusakambangan Island off the north coast
of Java.

Preparations for the executions began on Thursday at about 7 p.m.

The guard was doubled at Wijayapura Port, the entrance to the prison.

The police'€™s Mobile Brigade (Brimob) was seen departing from Wijayapura heading for Sodong in Nusakambangan in the evening. They were followed by another group of Brimob personnel.

'€œWe handed over the convicts to the executors at 11 p.m.,'€ Suwarso said as quoted by Tribunnews.com.

About 15 minutes after midnight the three convicts were reported to have been executed.

'€œTheir remains were transported in ambulances to the Sodong Port at about 2:30 a.m. to be further transported for their funerals,'€ he said.

All three requested to be buried in their hometowns.

The bodies of Jurit and Ibrahim were flown to Palembang, South Sulawesi, while Suryadi was buried at Rawapasung Cemetery in Sidanegara, Cilacap.

The AGO has plans to execute a total of 10 convicts this year. Four have already been executed.

Attorney General Basrief Arief, however, refuses to reveal the exact schedules for the executions and the names of the convicts in question.

'€œExecutions are not something that can be put on display,'€ he said as quoted by Antara on Friday.

In March, Nigerian drug trafficker Adam Wilson, sentenced to death in 2004 for possession of a kilogram of heroin, was executed in Thousand Islands regency, Jakarta.

As of December 2012, the Law and Human Rights Ministry listed 133 convicts on death row. Seventy-one were drug convicts, 60 were convicted for their involvement in murders and two for terrorism.

In 2008, Indonesia put 10 drug and murder convicts '€” including the three Bali bombers Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Mukhlas '€” to death.

Bali High Court recently rejected an appeal from British drug smuggler Lindsay Sandiford, 56, sentenced to face a firing squad.

The death penalty remains highly controversial in Indonesia and indeed everywhere else. There is widespread nationwide support for the death penalty, in part because Islam, the predominant religion in the country, approves of capital punishment.

Many others say that not only is it a human rights violation, but it has little deterrent effect.

Some NGOs have tried to persuade the government to adopt the United Nations'€™ General Assembly Resolution 62/149 issued in 2007, which calls for a moratorium on capital punishment.

As of October 2012, 155 countries had abolished the death penalty or had conducted no executions in the previous 10 years.

In 2009 Indonesia was the only Southeast Asian country not to execute any convicts.