Indonesia executes 3 Nigerians and one other prisoner

Indonesia: Indonesian authorities have executed four people by firing squad in Indonesia on Friday, despite pleas for mercy from prisoners, family and human rights groups.

The expected number of prisoners to be executed was originally 14 but the Attorney General Office announced that ten other prisoners would face a firing squad at a later date.
The execution was carried out in Cilacap, Central Java as the four men were executed at the nearby Nusakambangan island prison at 45 minutes past midnight local time.

Among the executed were Indonesian man Freddy Budiman and three Nigerians Seck Osmane, Michael Titus Igweh and Humphrey Jefferson Ejike all drug convicts.

Speaking to reporters outside the island prison in the early hours of Friday morning, the representative from AGO, General Criminal Attorney, Noor Rachmad, said

"We do this just to implement the law and to stop drug crimes".

Sister-in-law of one of the Nigerian man Michael Titus Igweh wept on Thursday as she described how her family were still battling for a second judicial review into his case when they read on a news website that he would be executed.

"We ask for justice to the government of honourable (President Joko Widodo) Jokowi. He (my brother-in-law) is a human, not an animal. Open your conscience, your heart, open your eyes ... respected leaders," she told reporters outside the prison.

The community Legal Aid Institute LBH Masyarakat, who handled the case of a Brazilian man Rodrigo Gularte's last year tweeted;

 "we lost another client, another friend: Humphrey Jefferson. Another dark day for us ... very dark".

Another of their clients, an Indonesian woman Merry Utami, did not face the firing squad.

"Deep condolences for the family of Seck Osmane, Freddy Budiman, and Michael Titus," they added.

The international human rights community has lashed out at the executions, describing them "barbaric" saying they put Indonesia on the "wrong side of history".