Cilacap, Indonesia: Indonesia executed four people convicted of drug crimes on Friday despite international protests and said it would decide later when as many as 10 others, including Indian convict Gurdip Singh, would be put to death.
48-year-old Gurdip Singh was found guilty by an Indonesian court of trying to smuggle in 300 grams of heroin and was handed death penalty in 2005. Gurdip Singh claims that he was abandoned in Indonesia after being tricked by an agent with promise of a work visa in New Zealand.
The Indonesian government had said earlier in the week that 14 people on death row, mostly foreigners, would be executed for drug crimes. Those executed on Friday by a firing squad include one Indonesian and three Nigerians. The authorities did not elaborate on the reason for the delay in the temporary respite.
Read: Bid to save Indian from execution on drug charges in Indonesia
Earlier on Thursday, India had requested that country to exhaust all legal recourse before carrying out the death penalty, in a last ditch effort to save Gurdip.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj last night had assured Gurdip's family that the government was making last minute efforts to save him.
MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said that the Indian Embassy officials in Jakarta were reaching out to the Indonesian foreign office and the senior leadership of the country on the issue.
Afdhal Muhammad, the legal representative of Singh was of the view that he could file for Presidential clemency under the relevant law before the President of Indonesia.
Amnesty International has identified what it calls "systematic flaws" in the trials of several of the death row inmates, and urged Indonesia not to proceed while appeals for clemency were pending.
President Joko Widodo has defended dramatically ramping up the use of capital punishment, saying that Indonesia is fighting a war on drugs and that traffickers must be heavily punished.
Friday's executions were the third under Widodo since he took office in 2014. The last round was in April 2015, when authorities put to death eight drug convicts, including two Australians.
Deputy Attorney-General Noor Rachmad said the severity of the drug trafficking crimes was a consideration in the execution of the four men. A decision about other executions would be announced at a later time, he said.
"It was not a pleasant thing but it was to implement the law," said Rachmad. "The executions are only aimed at halting drug crimes."
