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| Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso |
Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso's lawyers argue that she deserves a case review because of this
When Philippine citizen Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso was tried, convicted and sentenced to death in 2010 for smuggling heroin into Indonesia, the translator provided her was only a student.
Lawyers for Veloso, a 30-year-old single mother of 2, told the Sleman District Court in Yogyakarta on Tuesday, March 3, that this should be grounds to grant the request for her case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
If the court's 3 judges don't agree, Veloso will be sent to face the firing squad on Nusakambangan prison island along with 9 other convicts, including the Bali 9 pair from Australia. A case review request is the final legal option open to her.
'Only Tagalog' "The defendant does not speak English and Indonesian. She can only use Tagalog, but she was not provided a competent interpreter," lawyer Agus Salim told the court, according to Okezone.com.
The interpreter provided was a student and did not have a license from the Association of Indonesian Translators, he added.
Veloso, who comes from a poor family in Bulacan, north of Manila, only finished high school. She was in Malaysia supposedly to work as a domestic helper, but her would-be employer failed to meet her, the court heard on Tuesday. With 2 children back home, she agreed to an offer by foreigners to bring two suitcases to Indonesia.
She was only supposed to bring the two suitcases with her on board the April 25, 2010, AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Yogyakarta, and someone was supposed to pick her up at the airport and get the package from her.
But that last part never happened, because she was arrested before exiting the airport. Concealed inside the suitcases were packs of heroin wrapped in aluminum foil estimated to have a street value of IDR6.5 billion at the time (about $500,000 today).
Veloso maintains she did not know the suitcases contained heroin, according to local news outlet Radar Jogja. But subsequent appeals have failed and, in January, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo rejected her clemency request along with all others from drug convicts as part of his new administration's harsh stance on the death penalty.
'No correlation'
Prosecutors did not agree with Veloso's lawyer, however. Any objection to the translator should have been filed at the beginning of the 1st trial, prosecutor S Anggraeni said.
"The translator was also sworn in," he added, according to Okezone. "There are no rules about the interpreter having to meet certain qualifications."
There was also no correlation between the status of the translator and the substance of the trial, he said, arguing that this meant Veloso's lawyers failed to present new evidence - the requirement for a case review to be granted.
The trial will resume on Wednesday, with Veloso's camp expected to present witnesses to bolster her case.
Indonesia's Attorney General has previously stated that Veloso was included in the next batch of 10 drug convicts to face the firing squad - the only woman and the convict who has spent the shortest time on death row in the list.
However, Philippines Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said the execution had been "deferred because of the judicial review we requested."
During a state visit to the Philippines on February 9, Jokowi and Philippines President Benigno Aquino III signed 4 agreements, including one to combat illegal drug-trafficking. Contrary to previous reports, Charge d'Affairs Roberto G. Manalo of the Philippine Embassy said Aquino brought up Veloso's case with Jokowi during the visit.
Jokowi has issued a blanket rejection of all clemency requests from drug convicts on death row, citing Indonesia's drug emergency, despite mounting international pressure and calls for him to consider each case on its own merit.
Source: rappler.com, March 3, 2015
Indonesia may delay execution of 'mentally-ill' Brazilian convict
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| Rodrigo Gularte |
Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla says the execution of a convicted Brazilian drug smuggler could be postponed, if he is proved to be mentally ill.
"If he has a certain illness, he has to be treated first, let alone mental illness," the Media Indonesia daily quoted the vice president as saying on Tuesday.
Brazilian national Rodrigo Gularte, 42, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for smuggling cocaine into Indonesia and is among 11 death-row prisoners who are expected to be executed this month.
Inmates who are set to be executed include 2 Australians and 1 each from the Philippines, France, Nigeria, Indonesia and Ghana.
Last year, Gularte's family managed to file a request for a thorough examination of his mental health with the help of the Brazilian embassy in Jakarta.
Eventually, the offender's family appealed for a pardon on the grounds that he had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, who is delusional with psychotic tendencies.
However, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo has warned that nothing can derail the planned execution of the 11 convicts, calling on foreign countries not to intervene in the Asian country's internal affairs.
6 of them were executed in January.
Indonesia's Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo said on February 27 that Jakarta may go ahead with plans to execute the Brazilian drug smuggler despite claims by the convict's family that he is suffering from schizophrenia.
"We are seeking a 2nd opinion from an independent doctor because the one who certified him as mentally ill was a doctor appointed by his lawyers," Prasetyo said.
He added that Gularte could still face execution under the country's law regardless of his current health condition.
Attorney General spokesman Tony Spontana said on Monday the inmates would be transferred to the Nusakambangan island prison complex off Java this week, where they are due to be shot. He, however, did not give a precise date for the executions.
Indonesia is also currently engaged in a standoff with Australia over the execution plan of Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 33, who were arrested in 2005 on charges of smuggling 8.3 kilograms of heroin out of the Indonesian resort island of Bali into Australia.
Australia says the 2 convicts should be spared on the grounds that they have been fully rehabilitated.
More than 138 people are on death row in Indonesia mostly for drug crimes. Drug offenders face harsh punishments including the death penalty in the country. About 1/3 of the convicted are foreigners.
Source: Press TV, March 3, 2015
Death row convict executions imminent: Attorney General
Attorney General M. Prasetyo said on Tuesday that preparations for the executions of 10 death row convicts were nearly complete, with the convicts set to be transferred before the end of the week.
“We have only 5 percent left to prepare. This includes transferring the convicts to Nusakambangan,” he told reporters at the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) in South Jakarta, referring to the prison island where the first batch of drug-convict executions were held in January.
The attorney general also denied that he had been instructed to postpone the execution of a Brazilian convict, 42-year-old Rodrigo Gularte, as the latter might be mentally ill. He insisted that Gularte’s mental health was perfectly fine when he acted as a drug courier.
Prasetyo added that the law stipulated that only children and pregnant women were exempt from the death penalty.
Meanwhile in Cilacap, death row convicts have been receiving visits from their families. Serge Areski Atlaoui of France and Gularte were visited by their relative on Tuesday. Atlaoui was visited by his wife and his young child and other family members, while Gularte was visited by his cousins.
Gularte was found guilty of smuggling 19 kilograms of cocaine in his surf board in 2004, while Atlaoui was found guilty of being involved in the operations of an ecstasy and crystal methamphetamine factory in Banten in 2005.
In Yogyakarta, a hearing began on Tuesday on the case review of death-row drug convict Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines at the Sleman District Court in Yogyakarta.
Veloso’s lawyers argued that she had not been able to understand the trial that lead to her death sentence because she had been provided with an incompetent translator.
Veloso was arrested in Yogyakarta in April 25, 2010, in possession of 2.5 kilograms of heroin when she arrived on a flight from Kuala Lumpur. She is currently an inmate at the Wirogunan Penitentiary in Yogykarta.
She was intended to be one of the convicts to be executed in the second batch.
The other convicts facing imminent execution are drug convicts Zainal Abidin of Indonesia, Martin Anderson alias Belo of Ghana and Raheem Agbaje Salami of Nigeria, as well as three Indonesian murderers: Syofial alias Iyen bin Azwar, Harun bin Ajis and Sargawi alias Ali bin Sanusi.
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Source: The Jakarta Post, March 4, 2015
