INDONESIA EXECUTES INDIAN DRUGS MAN

JAKARTA: Indonesia executed yesterday an Indian national sentenced to death
in 1995 for drug smuggling, ending a three-year gap in carrying out the
death penalty.

The execution came despite an appeal from the European Union and sparked
criticism from human rights groups.

It also follows pledges by President Megawati Sukarnoputri, locked in a
tough election battle, to get tough on drugs traffickers.

A police firing squad shot convicted heroin smuggler Ayodhya Prasadh
Chaubey in the North Sumatra capital of Medan before dawn, national police
spokesman Paiman said.

"It was carried out under the authority of the prosecutors. Our men were
the executioners," he said.

Indonesia last carried out the penalty in 2001, when it executed two men
convicted of multiple murders.

Foreigners

In an interview with Indonesian broadcaster SCTV a day before his
execution, Chaubey said he did not deserve the death penalty and alleged
there were problems with the evidence presented by police.

The Indian embassy said it would not comment on the legal aspects of the
case but that it had requested reconsideration of an appeal by the
convicted man.

President Megawati has vowed to get tough in the war on drugs, and the
courts have handed down a handful of death sentences on convicted drug
felons, most of them foreigners.

About a dozen foreign drug offenders are on death row, many of them
Africans. All of the four Indonesians awaiting execution are female
couriers working for foreign syndicates.

Death penalty advocates have complained that the rulings were merely
rhetoric because Indonesia had not carried out the death penalty on a drug
smuggler for a decade. Human rights campaigners have pushed for an end to
the death penalty, which they say has proven ineffective in deterring the
country's thriving illegal drug business.