2 Nigerians, 7 others face execution in Indonesia

By The Citizen

Two Nigerians, Raheem Agbaje Salami and Silvester Obikwe, a Ghanaian, Martin Anderson, are among nine persons to be executed in Indonesia Thursday for drug-related charges.

They were members of an 8.3kg heroin trafficking ring dubbed the 'Bali Nine' who were convicted of attempting to smuggle the drugs out of Indonesia to Australia in 2005.

They were sentenced to death in February 2006 and have been living in Kerobokan prison in Bali.

The others due to face the firing squad are: Filipina Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, Serge Areski Atlaoui of France, Indonesian Zainal Abidin, and Rodrigo Gularte, a paranoid schizophrenic man from Brazil whose family has desperately fought to be transferred to a hospital.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran both Australians were the leaders of the gang.

Indonesia plans to hold the Australians and eight other convicted drug traffickers in one of the island's prisons before they are simultaneously killed by firing squads in the middle of the night.

The prison boss for Central Java province, Ahmad Yuspahruddin, confirmed last week that special isolation cells had been prepared for the Australian pair  away from the jail's other inmates who weren't on death row.

The transfer of the 'Bali Nine' to Nusakambangan was initially delayed by the logistics of carrying out the execution of nine people at once.