Describing their deaths as "torture", a Catholic priest who witnessed the shooting executions of two Nigerian drug traffickers in Indonesia says it took seven minutes for them to die.
News.com.au reports for seven minutes there was silence on the Indonesian island of Nusa Kambangan Island off Central Java except for the sounds of two men dying and a priest singing Amazing Grace.
A host of officials plus the two firing squads which had shot the men stood stunned and uneasy, listening to the life ebbing from the doomed men.
Most could barely give voice to their words or thoughts, except Father Charlie Burrows, who wanted both to die a Christian death and kept singing until the men made no sound at all.
Nigerian nationals Samuel Iwuchukwu Okoye and Hansen Antonious Nwaolisa were convicted and sentenced to death for smuggling more than 3kg each of heroin.
Fr Burrows describes how they were taken from their cells around 11.30pm on June 26 this year and their hands and feet shackled, driven in separate trucks to the execution site, a cleared area in the forest where two makeshift crosses had been constructed and were secured in boxes with rocks.
The men were tied to the crosses, hands behind their back, and black hoods placed over their heads.
"Antonious was thirsty so he asked for a drink of water ... and then for another and the prison guard was probably nervous and said you'll get a pain in your belly from the water and he said: 'The last thing I'm worried about is a pain in my belly, I'm going to be dead in a few minutes."
"He had a handkerchief and a 100,000 Rupiah note and he asked me to take those out of his pocket and give them to his wife," Fr Burrows says.
"Then he said, 'Father, are you still there, would you come forward and take off my shoes'. So I went forward and took off the shoes and he wanted his wife to get the shoes."
"After they were shot they were hurting. They were moaning and it takes seven minutes to die, the blood was coming out. So then I tried singing a few hymns when they were dying. So you could say it's torture, shooting people. It's torture," Fr Burrows says.
"It's torture. It's seven minutes to die so the heart is trying to pump the blood to the brain, the brain is still alive and as long as there's blood getting to the brain the brain is not going to die."
It is the same island and the very same scene in which condemned Bali bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra will be lined up before firing squads in the middle of the night and shot dead - in the bush, about 30 minutes drive south from the prison, News.com.au says.
The 65 year old Dublin born priest chokes with tears when recalling the night of the execution, saying it is cruel and inhumane and telling of the awful noises coming from the men for seven minutes after the fatal shots were fired.
SOURCE
Painful deaths await Bali bombers (News.com.au, 24/8/08)