Indonesia to carry out executions this year

Indonesia is set to execute some convicts on death row for murder and drugs offences in 2013 after not carrying out an execution for several years, a senior official said Saturday. There are 17 convicts, among them foreigners, who "can be executed starting from this year as they have exhausted all legal avenues for appeal," Mahfud Mannan, the deputy attorney general for criminal cases, told AFP. He did not reveal their identities or say when executions might take place. "Not all will be executed this year but what's certain is there will be executions this year," he added. But no one on death row in the prison on the resort island of Bali, where some foreigners are jailed, would be executed this year as they are all pursuing legal challenges, Mannan said. This includes a British grandmother sentenced to death last month for cocaine smuggling, who is pursuing an appeal that could take years, and two Australians convicted of attempted drug smuggling. The last prominent executions in Indonesia were in 2008 when three Islamic militants convicted over the 2002 bombings in Bali which killed 202 people, including many foreign tourists, were put to death. Mannan told AFP that he did not know precisely when Indonesia had last carried out an execution but said it had not been for several years. Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, two Australians on death row for attempting to smuggle heroin to Australia from Bali lodged appeals for clemency with the president last year, but have yet to receive a response. British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford, 56, was sentenced to death last month for smuggling nearly 5.0 kilos (11 pounds) of cocaine worth $2.4 million onto Bali. In Indonesia there are 111 people on death row, of whom 60 are Indonesians convicted for premeditated murder, two for terrorism and 49 other people convicted for drugs offences, most of whom are foreigners, Mannan said. Under Indonesian law, execution is conducted by a firing squad.