Execution of two brothers postponed

Execution of two brothers postponed

Agence France-Presse, Jakarta

The authorities on Tuesday postponed the scheduled execution of two brothers on death row for a premeditated triple murder, an official said.

Sadawa Hia, 23, and Taroni Hia, 26, were to face a paramilitary firing squad at an undisclosed location in West Sumatra province on Wednesday, provincial chief prosecutor Antasari Azhar told journalists.

Lawyers for the condemned men earlier Tuesday filed a demand for a case review, he said.

Azhar said he had planned to execute the men on Wednesday unless he received a demand for a case review by Tuesday.

"But it turns out the demand for the review came in," Azhar said.

He said he will in the next one or two days seek guidance from the Supreme Court on whether to go ahead with the execution or allow the case review to proceed.

"I will seek guidance from the Supreme court, and therefore the execution is postponed," he said.

Then-president Megawati Soekarnoputri rejected the brothers' demand for clemency in July 2004.

The Hia brothers were sentenced to death in March 2002 for killing three members of a family during a robbery in the West Sumatran town of Maninjau in December 2001.

The executions were to take place in Jakarta where the two were detained but they were returned to West Sumatra last month.

Indonesia has already held eight executions in just over a year after a three-year pause, ignoring complaints from rights groups.

In April, a woman who killed and mutilated three other women in East Java province between 1992 and 1996 was executed.

In May, a former ship's captain faced the firing squad in Sumatra island's Jambi province for having hacked to death his 16-year-old girlfriend in 1997 after he found she was cheating on him. He went on to kill her brother, mother and niece.