Indonesia: families told that 14 death row prisoners will be executed tonight

“If nothing has changed, there will be 14 people.”: AG

Coffins taken to Nusa Kambangan in preparation for firing squad deaths, as country carries out first executions since Bali Nine pair and six others last year

Spiritual advisers and families of inmates on death row in Indonesia have been told to prepare for executions tonight as coffins were ferried to the prison island of Nusa Kambangan on Thursday morning.

Lawyer Ricky Gunawan, who acts for Merri Utami, a former Indonesian migrant worker on death row, said her spiritual adviser had been informed the executions would take place overnight.

“The priest who assists Merri, he was told to prepare for tonight,” said Gunawan, the director of the Community Legal Aid Institute (LBH), which is representing Utami, and this week filed a clemency appeal to the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, on her behalf.

Syed Zahid Raza, the deputy Pakistani ambassador in Jakarta, said the family of a Pakistani man on death row, Zulfiqar Ali, had also been informed that he would be executed on Thursday night.

On Thursday, name tags were issued to family members, government officials and spiritual advisers – who provide comfort and guidance to prisoners in their final hours – to specify their relationship to the inmates, an indication that executions were imminent.

Gunawan said: “The name tags were also different. Name tags displaying who they are and which areas they allowed to access.”

Ambulances carrying the coffins arrived on Thursday morning at the port of Cilacap, the town on the Javanese mainland that is a gateway to the island penitentiary.

Notice was given to prisoners on Tuesday that their executions were to be carried out, but if they were to go ahead on Thursday night it would appear to be in contravention of Indonesia’s own regulations, which say at least 72 hours’ notice must be given.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Guardian, Kate Lamb in Jakarta, Thursday 28 July 2016 06.04 BST

Anguish as Indonesia fast-tracks execution of 14 death row prisoners

The isolation cells at Batu prison, Nusakambangan. Photo: Amilia Rosa

Indonesian executions set for midnight. Authorities have told the families of 14 prisoners on death row that their loved ones will die 24 hours earlier than planned.

Cilacap: Family members of 14 death row prisoners wept and one was close to collapse after learning the largest mass killing of convicted drug felons in Indonesia would take place on Thursday night - 24 hours earlier than expected.

Lawyers and embassy staff were also grim-faced as they emerged from the prosecutor's office in Cilacap on Thursday after being informed the deaths of the eight Nigerians, four Indonesians, one Indian and one Pakistani were just hours away.

The executions were proceeding despite nine of the condemned filing last-minute clemency pleas and pressure to postpone the executions amid growing evidence that some of those facing the firing squad could be innocent.

"This is just insane, it should be tomorrow," said the director of the Community Legal Aid Institute, Ricky Gunawan, who was filing clemency pleas on behalf of Indonesian woman Merri Utami and Nigerian Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke.

Human rights lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said at least three of those facing the firing squad - Mr Eleweke, Ms Utami and Pakistani textile worker Zulfiqar Ali - may have received wrongful judgments.

"In the name of justice, they deserve a retrial," Dr Mulya said.

He said many had not lodged clemency pleas until the 11th hour because that would be to admit guilt and they insisted they were innocent.

On Thursday morning 17 ambulances - 14 containing coffins - were ferried to Nusakambangan, known as Indonesia's Alcatraz, where the prisoners will be strapped to wooden posts and shot dead by a firing squad.

Police leaked grisly details to the media about the logistics of executions, including the size of the coffins, which were as long as 190 centimetres for some of the Africans.

They said 198 executioners would be deployed, 140 guards, 70 equipment personnel and a 16-person sterilisation team.

Each convict would require chains, a padlock, white aprons, a head cover, a pole, a chair, a marking sticker, a plastic bag for their belongings and scissors.

"This third round of executions is the largest number of people ever executed in Indonesia's history - it's unprecedented," Dr Mulya said.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, Jewel Topsfield, July 28, 2016

17 ambulances arrive on Nusakambangan

Seventeen ambulances, 14 of which carried coffins, arrived on Nusakambangan prison island in Cilacap, Central Java, on Thursday morning.

With the arrival of the ambulances, it is deemed highly likely that the executions of 14 death-row drug inmates will be conducted early Friday. It has been a long-standing tradition on Nusakambangan that ambulances are readied to pick up bodies of the condemned from the prison less than 24 hours before the executions.

In an earlier statement, Attorney General M Prasetyo said the executions of the 14 death-row inmates would be conducted early Friday. He said all technical and legal aspects of the executions had been fulfilled.

No list of those to be executed has been released as yet. However people to face firing squads reportedly include Indonesians Freddy Budiman and Merri Utami, Pakistani Zulfiqar Ali, Indian Gurdip Singh and Nigerian Onkonkwo Nonso Kingsley.

Earlier on Thursday, hundreds of military and police personnel, including National Police Mobile Brigade (Brimob) agents, were deployed in several areas around the Wijaya Pura Dock complex in Cilacap. They are securing and monitoring the area ahead of the executions.

“It has been jointly decided by the security team that we have to clear the Wijaya Pura area from all kinds of visits that are not related to the condemned [...],” said Banyumas Police spokesperson Adj. Comr. Bintoro, the only police officer authorized to make statements on the executions.

Source: Jakarta Post, Agus Maryono, July 28, 2016

⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." - Oscar Wilde

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog