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Economy 'more important' than executions: Indonesian Attorney General
Sydney Morning Herald - January 13, 2016
Asked if executions would be held this year, Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo told Fairfax Media: "We don't know yet".
"Currently we are still focusing on our effort to better the economy, It doesn't mean that's it's not important (to carry out the executions) but there are more important things. Therefore we have not determined when we will carry out the executions."
The Attorney-General's office allocated funds for executions in the 2016 draft budget in September last year, although Mr Prasetyo said at the time they were not budget priorities.
"Fourteen convicts will be executed," he said when reading out the Attorney-General office budget on September 17, 2015.
Mr Prasetyo repeated on December 23 that executions would be held in 2016, prompting headlines such as the Daily Mail's "Fresh agony for British granny Lindsay Sandiford as Bali prepares to execute new batch of drug smugglers in the New Year".
However the Indonesian government now seems determined to play down the executions. Luhut Panjaitan, one of the Indonesian president's most trusted ministers, said this week he didn't want to see them turned into sinetron, Indonesia's melodramatic soap opera.
"Regarding execution for drugs dealers, well, why don't you just wait. We don't need to be noisy, we don't need to make some soap operas," he told reporters.
"When the time arrives, well (whether it is) 20, 30 if necessary 40 altogether (can be) settled. But (the execution) does not need to be exposed, it is not necessary."
Fourteen people were executed in Indonesia last year for drug offences, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The circus surrounding the executions - including the jet fighter escort of Chan and Sukumaran to the prison island where they were killed – was internationally condemned.
At the time Indonesia's former foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda warned the Indonesian government to tone down its seemingly gleeful rhetoric about plans to execute foreign nationals on death row. "It's as if we enjoy killing people," he told the Jakarta Post.
British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford, who was sentenced to death for cocaine smuggling in 2013, is selling teddy bears and nativity scenes that she and other Kerobokan jail inmates have knitted, in a desperate bid to fund a judicial review.
Her case suffered a setback after her lawyer was arrested for corruption on an unrelated matter and a new lawyer is yet to be appointed,
Meanwhile, the family of Mary Jane Veloso, a a Filipino domestic helper on death row, was visited by her family in Yogyakarta this week.
Veloso was spared from the firing squad in Indonesia at the eleventh hour last year after her alleged human trafficker surrendered on the day of her execution. The mother of two has always maintained her innocence and insisted she was duped into smuggling drugs.
Lawyer Agus Salim told Fairfax Media the Attorney General's office had said they would allow Veloso to submit a judicial review of her case, based on the on-going trial of her alleged human trafficker in the Philippines, at which Veloso will provide video testimony.
"Once the trial in the Philippines is over, we believe Mary Jane will be off the (death row list) list," he said.
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