Sunday Times 2
Mercy pleas for Indonesia death row inmates as families arrive
View(s):CILACAP, Indonesia, April 25 (AFP) -Families of foreign drug convicts set to be hauled before the firing squad in Indonesia issued desperate mercy pleas today, as relatives and diplomats descended on a prison island ahead of the looming executions.
Consular officials were arriving at a town near Nusakambangan, the high-security prison island where its executions are carried out, and where all of the death row convicts are now congregated.
Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death in 2006 for drug smuggling (AFP)
The foreigners — two from Australia, one each from Brazil, France and the Philippines, and four from Africa — have all lost appeals for clemency from President Joko Widodo, who argues that Indonesia is fighting a drugs emergency.
Widodo has turned a deaf ear to increasingly clamorous appeals on the convicts’ behalf from their governments, from social media and from others such as band Napalm Death — the president is a huge heavy metal fan.
The the sister of Australian drug trafficker Myuran Sukumaran issued an emotional plea for his life to be spared.
“From the bottom of my heart, please President Widodo have mercy on my brother… change punishment for humanity,” Brintha Sukumaran said.
The family members of Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, the other Australian facing imminent execution, were also en route to Cilacap. The pair, sentenced to death in 2006, are the ringleaders of the so-called “Bali Nine” heroin-smuggling gang.