The Attorney General’s Office plans to execute 10 convicted felons in 2013 in Indonesia’s first wave of executions in four years.
Indonesian courts sentenced 113 people to death in 2012, but hasn’t carried out an execution since 2008. In recent years, the public, as well as prominent politicians like President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, have expressed an aversion to the death penalty.
But in this year alone, 60 murderers, 51 drug convicts and two convicted terrorists were sentenced to death.
The AGO planned to execute an inmate in 2012, but was hampered by delays, Deputy Attorney General for General Crimes Mahfud Mannan said at a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday.
“I scheduled to execute a convict this year, but it has been delayed as we’re still coordinating with the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights about the place [for the execution],” Mahfud said. “We’re targeting to execute 10 people next year.”
The AGO declined to list the 10 convicts scheduled for execution next year, or what crimes they had committed.
Yudhoyono recently spoke out against the death penalty, saying that Indonesia was moving against a global push to end capital punishment.
“We must not wrongly punish people,” the president said after commuting a death sentence for a convicted drug trafficker to life in prison in October.
The move later garnered criticism after the convict, Meirika Franola, was allegedly caught running a drug ring behind bars.