A Brazilian man executed
by firing squad along
with seven other
prisoners in Indonesia on
Wednesday had no idea
he was about to be killed
until his final minutes, the
priest who counselled
him has said.
He also revealed that
Mary Jane Veloso, a
Filipino woman who won
a dramatic reprieve, had
been aware a new
suspect in her case had
surrendered to police but
was only removed from
the prison about an hour
before the killings.
Rodrigo Gularte, 42, was
shot dead alongside seven
others, including four
Nigerians, two
Australians and an
Indonesian, for smuggling
cocaine into Indonesia in
2004.
Doctors had diagnosed
the Brazilian with
paranoid schizophrenia
and bipolar disorder. A
second diagnosis,
commissioned by
Indonesia’s attorney
general, has not been
made public.
Father Charlie Burrows, a
priest who ministers to
prisoners in Cilacap, said
he had tried in vain to
explain to Gularte for
three days that he was
about to be killed.
“He was hearing voices
all the time,” Burrows told
Irish radio. “I talked to
him for about an hour
and a half, trying to
prepare him for the
execution. I said to him,
‘I’m 72 years old, I’ll be
heading to heaven in the
near future, so you find
out where my house is
and prepare a garden for
me.’
“But when they took [the
prisoners] out of the cells
… and when they put
these bloody chains on
them, he said to me, ‘Am I
being executed?’ ”
Burrows said.
“I said, ‘Yes, I thought I
explained that you.’ He
didn’t get excited – he’s a
quiet sort of a guy – but
he said, ‘This is not right.’
“He’s lost because he’s a
schizophrenic. He asked
if there was a sniper
outside ready to shoot
him, and I said no, and
whether somebody would
shoot him in the car, and I
said no,” Burrows said.
After Gularte was
strapped to a wooden
plank, Burrows was
permitted to see him
again: “He said, ‘This is
not right, I made one
small mistake, and I
shouldn’t have to die for
it.’ So he was annoyed
more than anything else,
because he’s a soft-
spoken, quiet and
sensitive man.”
Burrows told Guardian
Australia that guards on
Nusa Kambangan, the
prison island where
Indonesia executes
convicts, had broken
down crying when 30-
year-old Mary Jane
Veloso said goodbye to
her two children for what
was thought to be the
final time.
He said Veloso had shown
“a false sense of joy”
during her final visit with
her family and sons, aged
12 and six, but broke
down at 2pm on Tuesday
when told it was time to
say goodbye. “She begged
for more time, ‘Will I not
get longer with my
children? They’ll never
see me again, I’ll never
see them again,’” Burrows
said.
“The whole place broke
down in tears. The
warden and attorneys felt
real bad about it. They
said to me they didn’t
agree with the thing, they
just had to do their job,
that there should be a
moratorium.”

He said some of the guards had asked him: “Are we responsible for the suffering of this poor woman and the families?” Veloso, sentenced to death after arriving in Yogyakarta in 2010 with 2.6kg of heroin in her suitcase, has claimed she was set up by a human trafficker. She was granted a reprieve late on Tuesday after the suspected trafficker surrendered to Philippine police. Veloso was told of the development on Tuesday afternoon, Burrows said, but her fate seemed sealed. It was between 10pm and 11pm, when the prisoners were locked in their cells for the final time, that she was taken away. “We were in the cells, just the time they give to the spiritual companions, and they took her out,” Burrows said. “In the last minute she was actually in the cell with the police, there was three police, and they took her out back to Yogyakarta.” Just after 11pm the prisoners were taken individually from the cells and driven to the execution site. They would not have been aware Veloso had been spared until they assembled at the firing range, he said. He said the two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, led hymns among the prisoners as they waited to be killed, joined by their spiritual advisers 30 metres away. “They were all trying to be strong because it was uppermost in their minds that they had made a mistake and that mistake has had a devastating effect on their families,” he said. Nigerians Raheem Agbaje Salami (also known as Jamiu Owolabi Abashin), Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Martin Anderson and Okwuduli Oyatanze were also executed on Wednesday morning , along with an Indonesian, Zainal Abidin. The Indonesian attorney general, HM Prasetyo, said on Wednesday the eight men, all drug offenders, had been executed simultaneously at 12.35am local time. They were declared dead three minutes later. “The result of the second execution was better, more orderly and more perfect than the last,” he said, referring to executions carried out in January and noting the bodies were treated more “humanely” this time. “Out of the eight executed, four, according to their last requests, are to be buried in their home countries,” Prasetyo said. “Two in Australia, one in Brazil, and one in Nigeria.” Abidin, the only Indonesian among the eight, was buried in Cilacap, near Nusa Kambangan, on Wednesday morning. Salami was to be buried in Madiun, East Java, and Anderson in Bekasi, West Java, he said. The bodies of Chan and Sukumarun were expected to arrive back in Australia for burial on Friday. As the bodies of the executed arrived in Jakarta, the United Nations joined the condemnation.