[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Feb. 13


INDONESIA:

Death for 3 killers in Siak



A panel of judges at the Siak Sri Indrapura District Court in Siak, Riau, 
sentenced 3 defendants in a mutilation case involving 7 victims - 6 of them 
young boys - to death on Thursday.

The 3 defendants were Muhammad Delvi bin Basri Tanjung alias Buyung, 20, 
Syopian bin Herman Ade, 26, and Dita Desmala Sari binti Suheri, 20.

The judges said they gave the 3 convicts maximum penalties because what they 
had done was beyond the grasp of humanity.

"Based on the facts and witness testimonies in the trial, the suspects 
deliberately committed premeditated murders as stipulated in articles 340, 55 
(1) and 65 (1) of the Criminal Code," presiding judge Sorta Ria Neva said while 
reading out the verdict on Thursday.

The judges said that during the trial, Delvi was revealed to be the mastermind 
of the black-magic related murders. He was responsible for the killing of 3 of 
the 7 victims: an 8-year-old and 2 10-year-olds, all from Perawang, the capital 
of Tualang district in Siak.

The other 4 victims, a 5-year old, 2 9-year-olds and a 40-year-old man, were 
murdered by Delvi and Syopian together in Bengkalis and Rokan Hilir regencies.

Before being strangled to death, all the victims were sexually molested by 
Dita, who is Delvi's ex-wife. Delvi mutilated the victims' genitals after they 
were dead. He soaked the severed body parts in water containing 7 different 
flowers to bathe with in an effort to inherit his father's shamanism.

The trial also revealed that Delvi and Syopian, who had worked at a 
slaughterhouse, skinned the body of victim Marjevan Gea and sold the flesh to 
an eatery in Perawang.

Their brutality was stopped only after the police arrested Delvi at the house 
of one of his relatives in Duri, Mandau district, Bengkalis regency on July 22, 
2014.

The sentences were similar those demanded by prosecutor Zainul Arifin of the 
Siak Regency Prosecutor's Office.

The panel of judges said there was nothing to give them a reason to make the 
sentences more lenient.

The judges considered the repeated brutality, the deep suffering that they had 
inflicted on the victims' families and the restlessness they had created in the 
community as aggravating factors for Delvi.

After consulting with his lawyer Wan Arwin Tamimi, Delvi said he would file an 
appeal. "If I may ask, don???t give me the death penalty, please. Life 
imprisonment will be okay so I will have time to repent," Delvi said after the 
trial.

Syopian and Dita, who were tried separately by the same panel of judges, also 
received the death penalty with the same aggravating factors. Both convicts 
also said they would appeal. Syopian's sentence was as demanded by the 
prosecutor. Dita, however, was shocked by the verdict because the prosecutor 
demanded life imprisonment for her.

The mother of 1 victim, Misna Anggraini, said she was satisfied with the 
sentences.

"Justice is served, lives for lives. I am sure the families of other victims 
also feel the same satisfaction about the death sentences," Misna said.

(source: Jakarta Post)






**********************

Bali 9: Ben Quilty recalls emotional farewell to death row inmate Myuran 
Sukumaran



Australian war artist Ben Quilty has described his goodbye to Bali 9 death row 
inmate Myuran Sukumaran as the "most difficult thing" he has ever done.

In an emotional interview with the ABC's 7.30 program, Quilty revealed 
Sukumaran was not sleeping because he was "considering in the middle of the 
night there will be knock at the door" by prison staff there to transfer him 
for execution.

Sukumaran and fellow Australian Andrew Chan were sentenced to death over a 2004 
plot to smuggle heroin into Australia.

Indonesian authorities granted permission for the pair to be transferred from 
prison ahead of execution on Thursday but a planned meeting to discuss 
preparations was believed to be delayed on Friday.

Quilty has been Sukumaran's art teacher and friend for 4 years and has been 
visiting him weekly for the past month, but says he understands his visit on 
Thursday as his last.

"I just felt that, and I think Myuran knew as well, that time had run out ... 
he always said be strong for me, and yesterday was the most difficult thing 
that I've ever done - to leave him there. And I did say goodbye," Quilty said.

"I think he's pretty resolved for what is going to happen to him and it's 
obvious they're making preparations inside the prison for him to move out. It 
was a very hard thing to leave him there."

Quilty said Sukumaran's attention had turned to his family.

"Having a little sister and a little brother, whose lives have just been put on 
hold for 10 years, and his mum, who are broken human beings because of what 
he's done to them, and now, at this point, all of his time and energy ... is 
put into trying to help them cope with what's coming," he said.

"He had a huge grin on his face [when he heard about the Julie Bishop and Tanya 
Plibersek's speeches in Parliament] and he said to me: 'Benny, can you believe 
this?'

"I said: 'Mate, I've been telling you that people care'. And in that position 
it's very difficult to understand that people do care and to hear it come out 
of Parliament was a powerful thing for both of them and their families.

"And I was a very proud Australian to see that happen."

Quilty reads Sukumaran's mail and while he says there is a "massive outpouring" 
of support for the men, there are some letters that support the execution.

"I opened Myuran's mail and one of the letters said: 'I hope you die a slow 
death'," he said.

"And that was a very confronting thing for me to read and Myuran's been coping 
with those letters for many years now ... it makes you feel very alone.

"So, to hear from smart, intelligent, worldly women, that they are thinking of 
him, filled with emotion ... it made their day. And it was a great thing for 
them to hear those words."

'Criminals can be rehabilitated'

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek, whose husband was charged and 
convicted of a similar crime to Chan and Sukumaran, delivered this personal 
speech to Parliament.

Quilty said it was "devastating" that Sukumaran's work to rehabilitate himself 
and others was not being considered.

"There's young men and women from all across the world who've done bad crimes 
that are in that prison who will be lost without Myuran," he said.

"And that's very devastating. It's heartbreaking to see he worked so hard to 
build this thing which will then just fall apart.

"I said goodbye to Myuran. I've been told I won't be allowed back into the 
prison. I don't know what hope there is.

"For the families who've done nothing wrong, for the little sister and little 
brother whose lives have been partly destroyed for 10 years, just let them 
grieve.

"And they're grieving already before the man is dead. Let them have some 
peace."

President 'against the constitution'

Meanwhile, a former Indonesian constitutional court judge has called for Chan 
and Sukumaran to be spared from the firing squad.

Professor Laica Marzuki read out a statement intended for Indonesia's president 
Joko Widodo.

"Mr president, you have walked to the wrong patch. You are wrong. You are 
against the constitution," he said.

"[The] right to life is a human right ... that cannot be limited under any 
circumstances."

Professor Marzuki sat on a constitutional court's case in 2007 that found if a 
person was on death row for 10 years and was substantially rehabilitated, their 
sentence could be commuted to life.

"Chan and Sukumaran should not be shot ... because [the] death penalty is 
against the constitution," he said.

(source: ABC news)

**************************

The Death Penalty: Australia, Indonesia and the Rule of Law



The death penalty may be a monstrous use of a state's power against the human 
subject, but the campaign against its use by states who have abolished it can 
prove inconsistent. While Australia sermonises against the evils of putting a 
person to death, it stalls on the broader issue of how best to approach a 
state, like, for instance, Indonesia, which uses capital punishment against 
drug traffickers in the name of upholding the law.

Much of this has spiked with the vain efforts to secure clemency for Australian 
citizens Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, both of whom are destined for the 
firing squad for their role in organising the drug trafficking outfit that came 
to be known as the Bali 9. The narratives on the so-called Bali 9 avoid with a 
good deal of blindness Indonesian accounts on the drug trade - that it, too, 
results in generous number of corpses. Australian MPs have deflected the issue, 
insisting that, "Their crime, serious as it was, was intended to impact on 
Australians in Australia, not Indonesia."

Indonesia's Attorney-General, H.M. Prasetyo, saw no distinction. "[The 
executions] will send a message to members of drug syndicates - there is no 
mercy for drug dealers and traffickers." To those who disagreed with the death 
penalty, Prasetyo insisted they consider "that what we are doing is simply to 
save our nation from the threat of narcotics" (Business Insider Australia, Feb 
12).

The focus is, rather, on the cruelties that will be visited upon the two men. 
"The idea that the government would," reflected Justice Lex Lasry, "take 
individuals into the bush and shoot them is something I can never live with, 
can never understand." [1] Pleas for clemency have been made by Prime Minister 
Tony Abbott and Australia's minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop.

The President of Indonesia, the still freshly elected Joko Widodo, was in no 
mood to accede to the requests. As part of his fresh approach to the issue of 
combating the drugs trade, he has decided to bracket all and sundry. This is 
domestically problematic, suggesting that Widodo might be overstepping the 
mark. According to Ponti Azani, who represents both Chan and Sukumaran, 
Indonesian law requires a consideration of each individual case.

What such responses suggest is that a good deal of exceptionalism is at play, 
one that actually takes the battering ram to the very rule of law that is 
deemed sacred in the Anglophone sphere. (It should be added that all states, 
even those with the death penalty, play it, including Indonesia, in making 
efforts to save their own citizens from the executioner in other countries.)

Australian citizens are deemed to be of a better mineral than locals, over men 
and women whose passports should grant them a more compassionate hearing and 
fate. Tim Mayfield, writing in The Drum (Jan 23), noted the response of Brazil 
and the Netherlands in recalling their ambassadors to Indonesia as a protest 
against the use of the death penalty against its citizens. Would Australia be 
"willing to take the same stand"?

The Australian, a paper not exactly bound to the human rights canon, put forth 
its own variant of the rule of law. "This newspaper's objection to the death 
penalty is not targeted at Indonesia; it arises from the principle that the 
protection of life, including from the power of the state, is the moral bedrock 
of any worthy system of law" (Feb 12). That the paper objects to the power of 
the state in that manner is a curious thing indeed, when one considers the 
paper's endorsement of Australia's own variant of the gulag archipelago in 
processing asylum seekers, some who remain in indefinite detention. How 
attitudes to cruelty vary.

The other form of exceptionalism plays out in attacking Australia's own 
authorities for alerting the Indonesian police about the activities of the Bali 
9. Big time populist and radio shock jock, Alan Jones, after terming the death 
penalty "barbaric" on the ABC's Q & A program, weighed into the role played by 
the Australian Federal Police for their collaborative approach in this regard. 
Had they made their own arrests and essentially been non-cooperative with their 
Indonesian counterparts, the drug traffickers would have been spared the agony.

The Jones recipe in this regard is significant. Not only did he fume against 
the Australian police, he felt that Canberra should have a greater, bossing 
clout when it came to Jakarta. The white man's burden, tinged with charitable 
reminder, reared the most ugly of heads. "Someone has to get on the phone to 
this bloke, [Widodo] and simply say, 'Well, you do what you like, but we gave 
you a billion dollars [in disaster relief aid] when you were hit by the [2004 
Boxing Day] tsunami." [2]

There is nothing to be said for the use of the death penalty, a cruel, 
mechanical application that finalises the irreversible. It is cruel, and it 
sanctions murder. But if the rule of law and the sovereignty of a legal system 
are matters to respect, then it can't be thrown out because the citizenship of 
one country is deemed more exceptional than another.

(source: Opinion; Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn 
College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne----Scoop news)

*******************

150,000 sign Bali 9 mercy petition



Thousands of people have added their names to a campaign to save imprisoned 
Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran from an Indonesian 
firing squad.

More than 150,000 people had signed the Mercy Campaign petition begging 
Indonesia to spare the lives of Chan and Sukumaran as of Thursday - an increase 
of more than 130,000 signatures in less than a month.

As Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop made an emotional plea in federal 
parliament on Thursday for Chan and Sukumaran to be saved from the death 
penalty, organisers behind the Mercy Campaign petition confirmed the huge 
increase in public support for the 2 men.

The petition asking Indonesian President Joko Widodo to show the men clemency 
has gathered more than 150,000 signatures, lawyer and campaign co-founder 
Matthew Goldberg told AAP.

Less than a month ago there were around 23,000 names signed in support of the 
pair across 2 petitions.

Mr Goldberg urged more people to sign the petition asking for mercy.

"The campaign isn't coming to an end. We are pressing on for more support, more 
numbers and more commitment to the movement for mercy," he said.

Mr Goldberg said plans were being made to present the petition to Indonesian 
authorities.

Ms Bishop made a last ditch plea after Indonesia's confirmation that the 2 men 
will be executed this month for their part in the so-called Bali 9 
heroin-smuggling plan 10 years ago.

"This motion goes to the heart of what we believe will be a grave injustice 
against 2 Australian citizens facing execution in Indonesia," she told 
parliament on Thursday.

"Without doubt, Andrew and Myuran need to pay for their crimes with lengthy 
jail sentences but they should not need to pay with their lives."

(source: Yahoo News)

***************************

Bali 9 executions: Meet the 9 others on Indonesia's death row



Joining Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in the next, imminent round of 
execution by firing squad are 9 others - 4 Indonesians and 5 foreigners. Paul 
Toohey asks: who are these death-row candidates and what are their crimes?

Martin Anderson, alias Belo, a Ghanaian national, has had it rougher than any 
of the others. He was sentenced to death by a Jakarta court in June 2004 for 
possessing 50 grams of heroin - worth, in current terms, about $2500. There 
have been no appeals on his behalf except by Amnesty. Ghana has no consular 
representation in Indonesia - its closest office is its high commission in 
Malaysia. A Ghanaian consular officer in Malaysia said that to his knowledge, 
no Ghanaian official had visited Anderson in prison since his arrest 11 years 
ago. "We are still working on it," he said. The officer said he had been 
approached by someone from Amnesty's Indonesian office about Anderson last 
week. "But when he was arrested in 2004, it could be he may not be from Ghana," 
said the officer. "It could be he is a person from another country using a 
false passport."

President Francois Hollande has been active - but ineffective - on behalf of 
Serge Areski Atlaoui, 51, a French national and married father of 4, who had 
his 2006 life sentence upgraded to death in 2007. Like all Indonesia's 
death-row drug candidates, President Widodo rejected Atlaoui's clemency appeal 
in January. He was convicted of running an ecstasy factory in the Banten 
Province of West Java. He has always pleaded his innocence.

The only woman on the list, Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, 30, a Filipino migrant 
worker, has also spent the shortest time on death row. The Sleman District 
Court sentenced her to death in October 2010 for bringing 2.6kg of heroin into 
Jogjakarta from Malaysia earlier the same year. According to reports from 
Manila, President Benigno Aquino III did not raise Veloso's case during 
President Joko Widodo's just-concluded state visit to the Philippines, where 
both leaders agreed to strengthen efforts in the war on drugs. Veloso, who 
comes from a poor rural family, was a courier for a major international 
syndicate.

When Marco Archer was shot dead after midnight on January 18, in the 1st 
tranche of 2015 executions, it spelled disaster for Rodrigo Gularte, a fellow 
Brazilian national on death row. Gularte was sentenced to death in 2005 after 
being caught smuggling 19kg of heroin through the international airport in 
Banten province. Brazilian President Dilma Roussell recalled her ambassador to 
Indonesia after Archer's death. He has since returned to Jakarta to continue 
what the Brazilian Embassy in Canberra says have been "dozens of efforts" on 
behalf of both men.

3 Indonesian men, Syofial (alias Iyen bin Azwar), Harun bin Ajis and Sargawi 
(alias Ali bin Sanusi), are the only people among the 11 who will die for non 
drug-related crimes. According to Amnesty International and other reports, they 
were sentenced to death in the Bangko District Court in November 2001 for the 
premeditated murder (accompanied by rape and theft) of 7 family members of an 
indigenous Kubu tribe in Jambi Province, on the east coast of Sumatra.

The other Indonesian in the group, Zainal Abidin, from Palembang in south 
Sumatra, had his 2001 life sentence upgraded that same year to death for his 
role in smuggling 58.7kg of marijuana on the well-travelled Aceh-to-Java dope 
smuggling route. Indonesian authorities at the time of his arrest were cracking 
down on the marijuana trade, believing the proceeds from sales were being used 
to fund the Free Aceh Movement of north Sumatra.

Raheem Agbaje Salami, a Nigerian (who was initially wrongly said to have come 
from Spain) spent 5 years believing that he would one day be released. He had 
been sentenced, in 1999, to a life term by the Surabaya District Court in East 
Java for bringing 5.3kg of heroin through Surabaya airport. In 2006, however, 
the Supreme Court His upgraded his sentence to death. There has been little 
reporting of his approaching execution in mainstream Nigerian media, but 
Nigeria summoned Indonesia's high commissioner to express "huge disappointment" 
after Indonesia wrongly said 2 Nigerians had been shot in the 1st round of 
executions in January. It turned out only 1 Nigerian, Daniel Enemuo, was 
executed.

***************************

Julie Bishop says executing Bali 9 pair might hurt Australian tourism to 
Indonesia ---- Foreign minister says Australians will demonstrate 'deep 
disapproval' of Indonesia's actions, including by making decisions about their 
holidays



Julie Bishop has warned tourism to Bali could be threatened if Indonesia goes 
ahead with the execution of 2 Australian drug smugglers.

Permission has been granted for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran to be 
transferred from their Bali prison for their execution, though a date is yet to 
be officially set.

A day after she pleaded for clemency in parliament, the foreign minister said 
Australians could be turned off holidaying in Bali if Indonesia went through 
with the execution.

"I think the Australian people will demonstrate their deep disapproval of this 
action, including by making decisions about where they wish to holiday," she 
told Fairfax radio on Friday.

Her comments were also echoed by former high court judge, Michael Kirby, who 
said it was "sadly" likely the case Australians would reconsider their holiday 
destinations.

Bishop said the government would leave no stone unturned in its bid to secure a 
stay on the Bali Nine members' executions.

"Executing these 2 young men will not solve the drug scourge in Indonesia," she 
said.

"It's a very tense situation."

Kirby said a dip in tourism was only one potential consequence of Indonesia 
executing the 2 Australians.

"Right to the very end I would expect the Australian government, with the 
support of the opposition and Australian people, will be making 
representations," he said on Sky News.

"In that respect we will be following the endeavors that Indonesia follows in 
respect of its citizens when they are facing death overseas."

Kirby said there was still a question over whether the death penalty was a 
deterrent for crime and emphasised the heroin was being smuggled out of 
Indonesia, not in to Indonesia.

"The important thing in this case this was not Indonesian drug dealing, it was 
Australian drug dealing, these were Australians who are getting on to an 
Australian plane to bring them back to Australia with Indonesian drugs," he 
said.

When asked if he thought Bishop should do a last minute "mercy dash" to 
Indonesia, Kirby responded that he thought "additional steps" would be taken.

As the pair's lawyers make a last ditch effort to stop the execution through 
the courts, Momock Bambang Samiarso, head of Bali provincial prosecutors, said 
a meeting on Thursday afternoon confirmed the pair would be transferred away 
from Bali for execution.

Sukumaran and Chan were sentenced to death for their part in an attempt to 
smuggle more than 8kg of heroin in 2005. Seven other Australians are in jail in 
Indonesia for their roles in the plot.

Prosecutors are trying to keep the transfer a secret, and the official avoided 
confirming the men would be taken to Nusakambangan, a prison island off central 
Java.

"We ask it to be as soon as possible," Samiarso said.

The date of the transfer was due to be confirmed on Friday. Chan, Sukumaran and 
their families will be given 72 hours' notice of the date of execution.

Indonesian lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said on Wednesday the legal team would go 
to an administrative court to argue Indonesian president Joko Widodo could not 
make a sweeping rejection of clemency appeals based on his declared "drug 
emergency" in the country, but must assess each individually.

Australia has made repeated attempts to have the execution stayed. On Friday 
the education minister, Christopher Pyne, said the government had done 
"absolutely everything" it could.

"The problem with the way Indonesians see this matter is that they have 5 
million ... drug addicts in Indonesia, they take a very, very firm line on drug 
smuggling," he told Channel 9.

Pyne said that while the government had done "all it can" for the pair, "at the 
end of the day Indonesia is a sovereign nation."

"They're their laws, we don't support them, we don't agree with them," he said. 
"It'll be a great tragedy if those 2 young men face the death penalty."

Foreign minister Julie Bishop and Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman, Tanya 
Plibersek, made heartfelt pleas for clemency in parliament on Thursday.

Bishop said the Sydney pair's attempt to smuggle more than 8kg of heroin was a 
grave crime that deserved punishment. But they didn't deserve to pay with their 
lives.

"Both men are deeply, sincerely remorseful for their actions," Bishop said. 
"Both men have made extraordinary efforts to rehabilitate."

Plibersek followed with an equally powerful argument against the pair's 
executions.

She reflected on her husband Michael Coutts-Trotter's drug conviction 30 years 
ago, and what a loss it would have been if he was punished with death.

"They would have missed out on a man who spent the rest of his life making 
amends for the crime that he committed," she said.

The Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi said she had received letters 
from both women and phone calls from the minister. Her replies were clear and 
consistent, she said.

"I have told Julie that this is not against a country, this is not against 
nationals of a certain country, but this is against a crime, against an 
extraordinary crime," she told reporters in Jakarta.

"We will keep on communicating, explaining, in consistent language like that."

The families of Chan and Sukumaran have continued visiting them daily in 
prison. The artist Ben Quilty and Victorian supreme court judge Lex Lasry 
joined them on Thursday.

Only Widodo can save the men from execution, but he gave a defiant vow this 
week not to succumb to outside pressure on the death penalty for drug felons.

In her statement, Bishop said besides more than 55 ministerial and prime 
ministerial representations for the men, high-profile Australians had made 
"discreet overtures to their influential Indonesian contacts."

(source for both: news.com.au)

*******************

Govt threatens boycott over executions



Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has struck a blow at Indonesia's crucial tourism 
industry in a continuing effort to save the lives of 2 Australian citizens.

The Foreign Minister says she has been "overwhelmed" with messages of support 
from Australians who may shun the nation if the execution of Andrew Chan and 
Myuran Sukumaran goes ahead.

"I think the Australian people will demonstrate their deep disapproval of this 
action, including by making decisions about where they wish to holiday," she 
said.

The government has ramped up its rhetoric in recent days in a last ditch 
attempt to prevent the killing of Chan and Sukumaran, who have been convicted 
of drug charges.

Both Ms Bishop and shadow foreign minister Tanya Plibersek spoke passionately 
in Parliament on Thursday calling on Indonesia to back down.

Authorities in Indonesia are finalising plans to move the men from Bali to 
their place of execution on a prison island off Java.

"I've been overwhelmed with emails and text messages, I know that people have 
been staging vigils and rallies," Ms Bishop said.

"We're asking for clemency, we're asking for mercy for 2 Australian citizens 
who have been rehabilitated."

The men have lost an appeal and a judicial review of their death sentences and 
have been denied clemency by the Indonesian president. Their legal team had 
attempted a 2nd judicial review, which was not accepted. A rare legal challenge 
to an administrative court against the Indonesian president's refusal to grant 
them pardons is pending.

Chan and Sukumaran face execution by firing squad. Only 3 bullets will be fired 
at each of the men, increasing the likelihood that the men will not die 
instantly.

"Executions are not clean killings," their Australian lawyer, Julian McMahon, 
told AAP in January.

"If the prisoner isn't dead straight away, the commanding officer is meant to 
walk up and then put a bullet in the head."

Education Minister Christopher Pyne has said that the government, with the help 
of Labor, has done "absolutely everything" it could to rescue the men.

"It'll be a great tragedy if those 2 young men face the death penalty," Mr 
Pyne.

(source: The New Daily)

*************************

Rodrigo Gularte - Facing the firing squad while mentally ill



The plight of Rodrigo Gularte has not been widely reported in our media; he is 
one of the eleven individuals named by the Attorney General of Indonesia as 
next to face the firing squad. He was this week formally diagnosed with 
'schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with psychotic features' and requires 
immediate treatment. To execute him now would go against international law.

Rodrigo, 43, a Brazilian national, grew up in Parana in Southern Brazil. He 
regularly spent time on the family farm in Paraguay during his childhood. He 
was convicted of attempting to smuggle 6 kilograms of cocaine into Jakarta in 
July 2004. The cocaine was discovered inside 8 surfboards. Tangerang District 
Court sentenced Rodrigo to death in February 2005.

In 2014, the Gularte family, with the assistance of the Brazilian Embassy, 
requested a medical report on Rodrigo's condition. Rodrigo was assessed by 
Professor Haji Sowadi and a team of 5 doctors this week. A medical report 
released yesterday states that Rodrigo has a diagnosis of 'schizophrenia and 
bipolar disorder with psychotic features.' The report recommends that Rodrigo 
'immediately receive intensive psychiatric treatment with medications in a 
hospital.' It has been reported that Rodrigo has been prescribed Risperdal, an 
anti-psychotic medication, by a UN doctor in the past but he has refused to 
take it as he believes it to be poison.

Rodrigo's lawyer has confirmed that Rodrigo has been unable to communicate with 
his legal team. Rodrigo's mother has reported that when she visited her son 
late last year, he was incoherent and had lost around 15 pounds in weight. Tony 
Spontana, a spokesman for the Attorney General of Indonesia, had, prior to the 
release of the medical report, confirmed that 'the sentence can be met only 
after the [individual's] recovery.' As of yet, there has been no response from 
the Indonesian Government in respect of the medical report.

International law prohibits the execution of individuals with mental or 
intellectual disabilities. This applies not only in cases where the disability 
was present when the crime was committed but also in cases where the disability 
developed after sentencing.

We urgently call on the Indonesian Government to halt the executions of all the 
individuals named by the Attorney General as next to face the firing squad. We 
urge the Indonesian Government to comply with international law by acting on 
the medical recommendation to transfer Rodrigo Gularte to an appropriate 
psychiatric facility for the urgent and intensive treatment he requires.

(source: reprieve.org)