T

he Attorney General’s Office (AGO) has executed four death row inmates out of its announced roster of 14, but a lack of information about the reasons behind the change of plan still overshadows the executions of Indonesian Freddy Budiman, Nigerians Seck Osmane, Michael Titus and Humphrey Jefferson, despite the fact that their deaths have again put Indonesia in a harsh international spotlight.

Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo said the remaining 10 convicts were granted stays of execution because of ongoing legal processes involving their cases.

Speaking to the press on Friday, Prasetyo said that his office had been set to execute all 14 announced convicts at the scheduled time, but it had also been prepared for unexpected last-minute changes.

“You, of course, still remember the case of Mary Jane Veloso from the Philippines. The government of the Philippines filed a last-minute request to stay her sentence because she was still needed to testify in court as a victim,” Prasetyo said.

“And it did happen. When the execution was about to take place, the junior attorney general for general crimes [Noor Rachmad] reported back to me that after conducting a thorough study involving relevant parties, we only needed to execute four people,” he added.

Prasetyo highlighted that he took judicial and non-judicial aspects into consideration to finally delay executing the sentences of the other 10 death row inmates, but he denied that international pressure was part of the reason.

Dismissing the outcry from the international community for the government to review its insistence to impose the death penalty on drugs traffickers, Prasetyo made assurances that he would still put to death the remaining 10 convicts and many more who were involved in drug trafficking.

Prasetyo, however, again assumed a secretive attitude, leaving the public to wonder about the details.

There were limited details available even in the hours approaching the executions that took place in the early hours of Friday. Information about the executions that were about to take place on that day reached the public on Thursday afternoon only because detailed preparations were seen to be taking place around the secluded prison island of Nusakambangan.

By late Thursday evening, AGO officials, relatives and lawyers of the convicts remained convinced that all 14 convicts were still on the list. Relatives and spiritual mentors of all 14 also got ready around the execution site as they were informed that their family members were to be put to death in the early hours of Friday.

In the hours nearing the planned executions, former president BJ Habibie, who is known for his strong stance against the death penalty, sent a letter to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to ask him to impose a moratorium on capital punishment.

In his letter, a copy of which was circulated to the press, Habibie cited the injustice experienced by Pakistani Zulfiqar Ali to tell Jokowi that insisting on carrying out the executions was too risky.

Habibie also assured Jokowi that, “It is possible to fight narcotics-related crime without imposing the death penalty.”

Prasetyo, however, declined to comment on whether Habibie’s request was behind the government’s decision to reconsider killing 10 of the convicts.

The legal system in this country has often been marred by uncertainty, particularly because of confusing legal procedures — which appeared to also overshadow the recent planned executions.

Citing a provision that had actually been scrapped as the basis of his argument, the attorney general said he had decided that the clemency request of one of the four executed convicts had been invalid.

The provision in question, which was contained in the Clemency Law, used to limit the right to appeal for clemency to within a year of the reading of a verdict, but it was overturned by the Constitutional Court in June.

Amid a lack of transparency concerning Jokowi’s rejections of clemency appeals, a ruling by the Central Information Commission (KIP) issued in May provided a legal basis for the public to demand that the government release any documents related to proposals for clemency filed by inmates facing the death penalty.

Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung declined to comment on whether the State Palace had intervened in the AGO’s plans. Pramono said he had asked Prasetyo for the reasons behind the stays of execution, but he later refused to reveal Prasetyo’s answer.

“That is under the authority of the attorney general and therefore he is the one who can explain,” Pramono said on Friday.
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Apology:

The Jakarta Post made a serious error of judgment on Thursday night when it decided to run on its front page a headline story for the Friday edition with the title “Firing squads kill convicts”. The lead paragraph claimed that 14 people had been executed and the caption to the photo also said that Zulfikar Ali, the brother of the woman in the photo, was among the 14. We learned later that four were actually executed and the other 10, including Zulfikar Ali, were spared, but the paper had already gone into circulation, as had the electronic version of the paper. The failure to conduct verification before running the story is completely unprofessional and a serious violation of the main principles of good journalism. The Jakarta Post sincerely apologizes to all our readers, particularly to all those affected by the story, for this major failure.

— The Editor