Indonesia executes 6 drug convicts, including 5 foreigners

Police officers and security personnel stand guard as a ferry carrying ambulances sets off for Nusakambangan island where the executions of the five of six drug convicts will be performed, at Wijayapura port in Cilacap, Central Java, Indonesia, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015. AP

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian authorities said they have executed by firing squad five foreigners and an Indonesian woman convicted on drug charges despite appeals to spare them.

Attorney General Office’s spokesman Tony Spontana said four men from Brazil, Malawi, Nigeria, and the Netherlands and an Indonesian woman were shot to death simultaneously just after midnight Saturday, several kilometers (miles) from a high security prison on Nusakambangan island. The other woman from Vietnam was executed in Boyolali. Both areas are in Central Java province.

Their bodies were brought by ambulances early Sunday either for burial or cremation, as requested by relatives and representatives of their embassies.

President Joko Widodo in December rejected clemency requests. He also refused a last-minute appeal by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and the Dutch government to spare their countrymen.