Last Moments Of Indonesia Drug Convicts

Eight of the Bali Nine were killed last night

As they walked to face the firing squad on an Indonesian prison island, eight condemned drug traffickers defiantly sang praise to God, witnesses said, while in a town across the water a group of tearful supporters was also uniting in song.

The convicts ― two from Australia, one from Brazil, four from Africa and one Indonesian ― made the long journey from their prison to clearings on a prison island to meet their fate early today.

But rather than bow their heads in defeat and resignation, the convicts all reportedly refused blindfolds and raised their voices in song, including a rendition of “Amazing Grace”, until the gunfire from the firing squads rang out.

A chilling re-enactment of the execution

Across the water in the town of Cilacap, the final crossing point for inmates destined for death on the high-security Nusakambangan island, a small band of mourners held a candlelight vigil, and also sang “Amazing Grace”.

The haunting sounds filled the night sky, drowning out the sobs of those too distressed to contemplate what was taking place in the jungle-clad hills of the prison island.

 

Chan and Sukumaran sang Amazing Grace, along with the six other condemned men, before the shots were fired

When Bali Nine duo Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed, they died happy with a smile upon their faces, an Indonesian undertaker claimed. 

The Australians, who were found guilty of attempting to smuggle 8.3 kilograms of heroin into Sydney from Bali in 2005, were shot through the heart at about 12.30am local time on Wednesday.

Undertaker Suhendro Putro, 62, who was on Nusakambangan Island in Indonesia when the executions were carried out, said Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 34, were at peace when they were killed.

'They had a smile on their face and they had a look of happiness,' he told Daily Mail Australia through a translator.

'I think the reason why they were happy was because the pastor blessed them and brought them peace before their deaths.'

Undertaker Suhendro Putro was charged with organising the eight coffins for the executed men 

Before they were executed, the pair were granted their final wish to see their spiritual leaders Christine Buckingham and David Sopor.

One of the condemned men, Nigerian gospel singer Okwudili Ayotanze, was confident right until the end that he was going to be taken off the execution list due to his pending case in the Administrative Court.

Friends and those who knew him for more than 10 years in prison were dismayed his case had been left to the 11h hour.

They believed that, if the court process had started earlier, Ayotanze's life could have been saved. 

A friend close to Ayotanze said he never stopped helping other prisoners. He would make sure everyone would come out of their cells and attend Mass.

"He was basically the Nigerian version of Andrew Chan," he said.

"He was a good person. I will really feel the loss."

Okwudili Ayotanze  is a charismatic gospel singer who has released albums with titles such as "Never be afraid"

No family members of either Bali Nine member were present on the island while the executions were carried out.

Instead they stayed at the hotel to await the heartbreaking news from Consul-General in Bali Majell Hind who was tasked with delivering confirmation their loved ones had died.

A police car escorts an ambulance carrying the coffin of one of eight executed drug convicts

A coffin bearing the body of Indonesian drug convict Zainal Abidin is buried in Cilacap

Moments later, the eight inmates were dead, executed by 12-man firing squads after being tied to posts.

Just before dawn, their bodies returned from the island in coffins, some covered in embroidery.

Family members could be seen crying, ushered away by friends and supporters to begin the long journey to bury their loved ones.

Angelita Muxfeldt, the cousin of Brazilian inmate Rodrigo Gularte, wept as she was led through the large throng of onlookers by Father Charlie Burrows.

Supporters of 'Bali Nine' death row inmates, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukamuran, gather in Martin Place in Sydney

Raji Sukumaran is comforted by a family member during a press conference at the Grand Liana Hotel in Cilacap, Indonesia after visiting her son Myuran Sukumaran for the last time 

But others shed tears of joy. The family and friends of Filipina convict Mary Jane Veloso ― who was moments away from being executed with the others only to be granted a reprieve ― rushed to the port to embrace and express their disbelief.

For the Chan and Sukumaran families, there was no such solace. They had lost their sons, their brothers, after begging for their lives to be spared at every possible opportunity.

“They asked for mercy, but there was none,” the family said in a statement after the executions.

The date of the executions - April 29 - became official when a local funeral director in Cilacap was instructed to inscribe the names of those to be shot by firing squad and the date of their deaths

The duo were killed alongside Indonesian Zainal Abidin, Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, Nigerians Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Raheem Agbaje Salami and Okwudili Oyatanze, and Ghanaian Martin Anderson.

Reports: Daily Mail & AFP

Four Nigerians, Five Others Face Midnight Firing Squad In Indonesia

The Convicted "Nigeria Four"

Nine drug traffickers held emotional farewell meetings with their families at an Indonesian prison on Tuesday, after Jakarta rejected last-ditch pleas from around the world for clemency and ordered their mass execution to proceed within hours.

"I won't see him again," said Raji Sukumaran, the mother of an Australian who will go before a firing squad along with a fellow countryman and convicts from Nigeria, Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia.

The nine coffins are laid out in a holding area in Cilacap, before being transported to Death Island 

Ten convicted traffickers were earlier scheduled to face executioners. However, one of them, Serge Atlaoui of France, was given a last-minute, two-week reprieve pending another review of his case.

Security at the high-security prison on an island off the Central Java coast was heightened on Tuesday. Religious counsellors, doctors and the firing squad were alerted to start final preparations for the execution, and a dozen ambulances, some carrying white satin-covered coffins, were seen arriving.

TWELVE MARKSMEN FOR EACH PRISONER

 

Indonesia has harsh punishments for drug crimes

Indonesian authorities have declined to specify a time for the executions, which are due to take place at a nearby clearing in a forest, but the last time a group of drug traffickers were executed earlier this year it was carried out at midnight.

The prisoners will be given the choice to stand, kneel or sit before the firing squad, and to be blindfolded. Their hands and feet will be tied.

Activists light candles during a vigil for Filipina drug convict and death row prisoner Mary Jane Veloso whose execution is imminent, outside the Indonesian Embassy in Manila on April 26, 2015

Twelve marksmen are assigned to fire at the heart of each prisoner, but only three have live ammunition. Authorities say this is so that the executioner remains unidentified. Indonesia has harsh punishments for drug crimes and resumed executions in 2013 after a five-year gap. Six have been executed so far this year.

THE FOUR NIGERIANS

Martin Anderson, 50, Nigeria

Crime: Possession Of Heroin

Martin Anderson was arrested in Jakarta in 2003 on a charge of possessing about 1.8 ounces of heroin and was accused of being part of a local drug ring. He had traveled to Indonesia on a fake Ghanaian passport and has been incorrectly identified as Ghanaian.

He was sentenced to death in 2004.

 

Martin Anderson

According to his lawyer, Kusmanto, who like many Indonesians uses one name, Mr. Anderson was shot in the leg during his arrest — a method the Indonesian police are sometimes known to use when apprehending a suspect — and remains bothered by the wound to this day.

He has been in poor spirits since being transferred to Nusakambangan Island for execution, Mr. Kusmanto said.

Mr. Anderson has filed for a judicial review of his conviction and death sentence with the Supreme Court, but his lawyer said he feared the court would not consider the appeal until after he is executed.

Such appeals can take six months to be heard, Mr. Kusmanto said. “Obviously we hope it’s sooner.”

Okwudili Oyatanze, 41, Nigeria

Crime: Smuggling Heroin

The YouTube clip shows what seems to be a typical Sunday religious service at a small church. A young African man, accompanied by an Asian guitarist, sings a heartfelt gospel song as the audience sings along.

But the camera does not show the security guards, iron bars and barbed wire fences that would have indicated this was no ordinary place. The singer, Okwudili Oyatanze, was giving his regular performance at a penitentiary outside the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

Okwudili Oyatanze

Known in Indonesia’s penal system as “The Death Row Gospel Singer,” Mr. Oyatanze, 41, was arrested in 2001 while trying to smuggle 5.5 pounds of heroin through Jakarta’s international airport, in his stomach, after arriving on a flight from Pakistan. He was convicted the following year and sentenced to death.

Mr. Oyatanze has made the most of his incarceration, writing more than 70 songs and recording multiple albums behind bars. He has performed with prison guards as well as fellow inmates.

In the video, shot in 2008, Mr. Oyatanze sang his song “God You Know,” which was also the name of an album he released that year.

“He has turned his life around in jail,” said the Rev. Charles Burrows, a Catholic priest from Ireland who now lives in Indonesia and is offering religious counseling to Mr. Oyatanze as he awaits his execution.

Raised in Biafra, a strife­torn region in southeastern Nigeria, Mr. Oyatanze started a garment business in 1999, traveling to Indonesia to buy clothing and resell it in Nigeria. The business collapsed, and Mr. Oyatanze, heavily in debt, traveled to Pakistan to try to revive it, at the suggestion of a fellow Nigerian living there.

The plan involved swallowing capsules of heroin before boarding a flight to Jakarta. “There was a chance to earn some easy money, so he became a courier,” Mr. Burrows said.

Jamiu Owolabi Abashin, 50, Nigeria

Crime: Smuggling Heroin

Jamiu Owolabi Abashin was living on the streets of Bangkok in 1998 when a fellow African living there took pity on him and brought him home. Shortly thereafter, according to Mr. Abashin, his new friend asked whether he wanted a quick-paying job, in which he would get $400 for bringing a package of clothing to the friend’s wife in Surabaya, Indonesia, where she sold used shirts and pants.

Mr. Abashin readily agreed, but soon wished he hadn’t: The package contained nearly 12 pounds of heroin, and he was arrested after landing at Surabaya’s airport. Mr. Abashin, who was traveling on a false Spanish passport, contended he was duped.

He was convicted in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison, which was reduced to 20 years on appeal. State prosecutors challenged the sentence reduction before the Indonesian Supreme Court, which in 2006 sentenced Mr. Abashin to death.

Jamiu Abashin

In a request for presidential clemency in 2008, he admitted knowingly smuggling the drugs. The request was denied in January.

The Indonesian government refers to him as Raheem Agbaje Salami, the name on the fake Spanish passport he was using when he was arrested.

Ursa Supit, an Indonesian legal activist who is advocating on Mr. Abashin’s behalf, says that because he had no money, he was assigned a state lawyer for his trial and had no legal counsel when he appealed to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Abashin, who now has a lawyer, is challenging Mr. Joko’s rejection of his clemency request.

Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise, 47, Nigeria

Crime: Smuggling Heroin

Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise’s story, as his wife tells it, is similar to those of other Nigerians on Indonesia’s death row for drug trafficking. Unemployed in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, he was lured to Pakistan by fellow Nigerians on the promise of a job with good wages.

But once in Pakistan, instead of a job, he got an offer to swallow some capsules – filled with goat horn powder, his wife, Fatimah Farwin, says he was told – and fly to Indonesia.

“They said they didn’t want to pay tax on it,” Ms. Fatimah said. “When he arrived at the airport in Jakarta, the police saw him – I don’t know how – they caught him and X-rayed him, and they found it and it was drugs.”

Silvester Nwolise

Arrested in 2001, Mr. Nwolise was convicted the following year of bringing 2.6 pounds of heroin into the country, and was sentenced to death.

During his trial, according to Ms. Fatimah, Mr. Nwolise had no translator, and his Indonesian lawyer could barely communicate with him. She said that a judge, through an intermediary, offered to sentence him to prison rather than death if he paid a bribe of 200 million rupiah, worth about $22,000 at the time.

“But he was just a poor courier. He didn’t have any money,” Ms. Fatimah said.

Ms. Fatimah, who is Indonesian, met Mr. Nwolise in prison in 2007, when she was accompanying a friend who was visiting another inmate. The two married later that year; they have since had two children, now 5 and 3, but she has not brought them to see him since they were infants. She has told them that their father is working in an office in another country.

In January, the Indonesian police accused Mr. Nwolise of running a drug syndicate from prison. No charges were brought, but Ms. Fatimah, who says emphatically that her husband is innocent of the accusation, believes it resulted in his being placed in the group of inmates now facing imminent execution.

“Some woman on the outside blamed him,” Ms. Fatimah said, referring to a police informant, “but when they came to his cell, they never found anything – never, never, never. He never had a trial and next thing, they wanted to execute him.”

(Reports): Reuters & New York Times