Jakarta. A Filipina, who has been sentenced to death in Indonesia after being convicted for drug smuggling, will not be among the first round of executions carried out when capital punishment is resumed after a lull, the attorney general has said.
Indonesia imposed a moratorium on executions for five years before resuming them in 2013. It provoked international outrage in April last year with the execution of eight drug traffickers, seven of them foreigners, reported Reuters.
After the outcry, authorities reportedly said they were postponing executions while the government focussed on reviving the economy. But President Joko Widodo’s administration has this year pledged to resume executions by firing squad.
Filipino OFW, Mary Jane Veloso, got a last-minute reprieve last year, following a request from Manila after an employment recruiter, whom Veloso accused of planting drugs in her luggage, gave herself up to police in the Philippines, the report said.
“Not yet,” Attorney General H.M. Prasetyo told reporters when asked about Veloso. “We are still waiting on the legal process in the Philippines, which we have to respect.”
Prasetyo has said 16 prisoners will be executed this year, including nationals from Nigeria and Zimbabwe, but has declined to give a specific time frame. That number will be more than doubled next year, he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
