An Indonesian mother-and-son who murdered five people for revenge and a self-described shaman who killed eight were executed by firing squad overnight, an official said yesterday.
Tubagus Yusuf Maulana, alias Usep, was killed at 10:30pm on Friday in Banten on the western end of Java Island, Attorney General Office (AGO) spokesman Bonaventura Nainggolan said.
Sumiarsih and her son, Sugeng, were shot at 1:10am near Surabaya City in eastern Java, the spokesman said.
Maulana was found guilty last year of leading of a gang that lured credulous villagers with supernatural promises of wealth into paying him thousands of dollars. The villagers were tricked into drinking a poison-laced potion and dumped into mass graves.
“His last requests were, first, that he wanted to be with his family in the last week. Second, he asked not to be treated like a prisoner and have his hands tied. Third, he wanted to be executed on a Thursday or Friday,” Nainggolan said.
Sumiarsih and her son, Sugeng, were found guilty in 1989 of the premeditated murder of five members of a single family in Surabaya, East Java Province, the previous year.
The murders were an act of revenge over a business dispute.
The bodies of all three prisoners were returned to their families early yesterday for burial, Nainggolan said.
Indonesia has seen a string of capital punishments in recent months, which started with the execution of two nationals from the African nation of Nigeria last month on drug charges.
Earlier this month Indonesia also executed another self-described shaman, Ahmad Suraji, who strangled 42 women and drank their saliva to increase his black magic powers.
AGO spokesman Nainggolan denied the rash of executions was part of a concerted campaign to deter crime in the archipelago.
“We’ve been carrying out the decisions of the courts,” he said.
Executions in Indonesia are by firing squad, usually carried out at night in isolated and undisclosed locations. The prisoner is notified at least 72 hours in advance.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS