Fourteen death row prisoners from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, India and
Indonesia were on Tuesday told they had 72 hours to live, according to
the Community Legal Aid Institute.
Many of these are filing eleventh hour clemency pleas with President
Joko Widodo, even though some still maintain their innocence. However
preparations for the executions are intensifying at Cilacap in Central
Java, the gateway to the penal island of Nusakambangan, where the
prisoners will be shot dead by special police known as BRIMOB around
midnight on Friday.
Community Legal Aid Institute director Ricky Gunawan
and lawyer of Nigerian death row inmate, Humphrey Ejike Jefferson
Eleweke, who was with the prisoners when they were served with the
papers marking the beginning of the 72 hour countdown on Tuesday said
the Africans believed they had been unfairly targeted.
“They said the Indonesian government just hate us, they want to kill us
because we are black,” Mr Gunawan.
xxxHis Nigerian client, Eleweke, who is seeking clemency from the
president but maintains his innocence, refused to sign the notification.
While Mr Eleweke hoped for a miracle, Mr Gunawan said, he was aware it
was unlikely given Indonesians blame Africans for bringing much of the
illegal drugs into the country.
Mr Eleweke’s trial judgement included the statement that “black-skinned
people from Nigeria” are under surveillance by police because they are
suspected of drug trafficking in Indonesia.
His case was one of those highlighted in the Amnesty International
report When Justice Fails which raised concerns about his lack of access
to a lawyer at the time of his arrest, torture and the impartiality of
the court process.
Mr Gunawan said that legally those prisoners who had filed for
presidential clemency should be taken off the execution list because
they had not exhausted all their legal avenue.
Source: The Age
