Govt denies delaying executions
JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Justice Oetojo Oesman denied allegations yesterday that it was inhumane for the government to leave inmates on death row in jail for more than twenty years before being executed.
Oetojo said that the government does not postpone executions but that delays are often caused by the long clemency application process as well as the health of those on death row.
He said that in some cases postponed executions work in the favor of a prisoner, such as when their requests for clemency are granted in the meantime.
"Some prisoners facing the death penalty were finally given clemency and freed after being in jail for years," Oetojo said, obviously referring to two political prisoners who last month were released after serving 30 years in prison.
The two were Soebandrio, a former foreign minister, and Omar Dhani, a former Air Force chief, both of whom were convicted of supporting the communist abortive coup in 1965.
"We never intend to delay cases dealing with capital punishment. The process takes time," the minister said moments after attending a parliamentary hearing with members of Commission III of the House of Representatives.
In yesterday's hearing, both the minister and legislators agreed that they would start discussing a draft on the country's correctional institutions next month.
Oetojo said that he first has to go to Beijing to attend an international conference on corruption and other social ills in developed and developing nations.
The execution issue surfaced last month when Oetojo said that a number of prisoners would soon be executed.
Although he made no reference to any particular prisoner, it is believed that the two are Bungkus and Marsudi, former members of the elite presidential guard implicated in the kidnapping and killing of the army generals that followed the abortive coup of 1965. Both have been in jail for more than 20 years.
His remarks prompted members of the National Commission on Human Rights and local as well as international non-governmental organizations to comment that their incarceration was against humanitarian principles.
When asked whether there was a possibility for Indonesia to adopt the so called "conditional release" of political prisoners with a record of good conduct, as applied in China, Oetojo said that his ministry would first study the system and discuss it with the legislators in next month's hearing.
He added, however, that the system is not common in any criminal code and that adopting it could weaken the country's criminal laws.(03)