 |
| Rodrigo Gularte has been mentally ill since he was a teenager. |
Rodrigo Gularte has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but his illness may not stop a 12-man firing squad.
Jakarta, Indonesia - Rodrigo Gularte spends much of his days conversing with an absent person, alone in his cell. His fellow prisoners believe he talks to ghosts.
Black magic is greatly feared in Indonesia and most inmates avoid the 42-year-old Brazilian - one of a minority of foreigners held on the prison island of Nusa Kambangan in Central Java province.
But according to doctors, the ghosts he talks to are in fact voices inside his head.
Gularte's sanity has steadily deteriorated since being sentenced to death in 2005 for smuggling 6kg of cocaine into the country, sealed inside surfboards.
Last year his family, assisted by the Brazilian embassy, arranged for a group of specialists to evaluate his mental health. Psychological assessment reports seen by Al Jazeera show that after visiting him twice monthly between July and November, they concluded he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
"Now Rodrigo lives in an unreal world," his cousin Angelita Muxfeldt says. "He was first diagnosed with depression and bi-polar disorder when he was 16, but he's never accepted treatment or medication. So it's very difficult."
Most pertinent among his delusions is that Indonesia has abolished the death penalty.
"He doesn't believe he could die. One of the voices tells him he will be extradited and that he will go home," Muxfeldt says, speaking to Al Jazeera by phone from Cilacap town, near the prison where Rodrigo is being held.
But this is not true.
The Brazilian embassy has made efforts to have Gularte's life spared, but relations with the Indonesian government have been strained since fellow Brazilian Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira was executed last month for smuggling cocaine.
President Dilma Rousseff withdrew her ambassador and refused to acknowledge Indonesia's new ambassador, Toto Riyanto, after reports that Moreira was dragged crying from his cell, and was refused religious counsel in his final moments.
It seems all that stands between Gularte and a similar fate is the conclusion of a small team of psychiatrists sent by the Indonesian attorney general's office to assess his condition last Tuesday.
To save the Brazilian's life it is vital that his illness be recognised. In accordance with Article 44 of the Indonesian penal code, a person who has a mental disorder cannot face sentencing. Executing anyone suffering from mental illness is also prohibited under international law.
Regardless of the eventual decision, rights campaigners say that from the beginning Gularte's treatment has demonstrated the calamity of Indonesia's legal system.
"Rodrigo has been mentally ill since he was a teenager," says Haris Azhar, coordinator of Kontras, a Jakarta-based human rights NGO. "You cannot try a mentally ill person, and the court failed to establish that he had a mental condition. These are major failings. He does not speak Indonesian, he did not have a lawyer - you cannot claim that he faced a fair trial."
Source: Al Jazeera, March 9, 2015
.jpg)
