Indonesia: Record number executed in four weeks

Despite what The Jakarta Post described last week as "an increasingly anti-capital punishment sentiment in Indonesia", the government has executed as many people in the past month as it did in the previous three years.

Indonesia has executed six people since June, after three convicted murderers were shot in East Java late last week.

According to reports by The Jakarta Post and newsagency Antara, a woman named Sumiarsih, 60 (also reported as Sumiasih, 59), and her son Sugeng, 44, were executed at Banten, East Java early on Saturday morning (19 July).

They were convicted, along with two other members of their family, of murdering a marine and four members of his family in 1988.

The previous night (18 July), Usep, alias Tubagus Yusuf Maulana, was executed for poisoning eight people in June and July 2007, after they had come to him as a shaman who could "multiply their money".

On 10 July, Ahmad Suradji, 57, was executed in North Sumatra for murdering 42 women and girls over an 11 year period.

Two Nigerian men were shot on 26 June for heroin smuggling offences. Samuel Iwachekawu Okoye and Hansen Anthony Nwaoysa were executed on Nusakambangan prison island, central Java.

Nwaoysa was sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle 600 grams of heroin from Pakistan to Jakarta in January 2001. Okoye was arrested at Jakarta airport with 3.8 kilograms of heroin in the lining of his luggage after flying in from India.

Several recent reports have suggested authorities may be preparing to execute three men sentenced to death over the October 2002 bombing on Bali, which killed 202 people and injured 200.

Related stories:
Indonesia: Drug offenders executed, more to come -- 29 June, 2008
Executions in Indonesia since 1995 -- 26 September, 2006
Bali executions will inspire martyrs: expert -- 25 February, 2008