Executions to mark anti-drug day
2008-06-26 13:02
Jakarta - Indonesia will on Thursday execute two Nigerians convicted of smuggling illegal drugs to mark the United Nations' anti-drugs day, officials said.
Samuel Okoye, 37, and Hansen Nwaolisa, 40, were arrested at Jakarta's international airport in 2001, each carrying more than 3kg of heroin. They have been held at a high-security prison on Nusakambangan island since their conviction.
"They will be executed tonight," Attorney General Hendarman Supandji told reporters on Thursday.
He refused further comment, but the country's anti-narcotics agency said their deaths before a firing squad would mark the international anti-drugs day.
Television footage showed the wives and children of the convicts being escorted to the island, along with ambulances carrying two coffins.
Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to death in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim and socially conservative nation of 235 million people, and foreigners have not been exempt. About 140 people are currently on death row, most for drug-related crimes.
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- AP