| Mary Jane Veloso (source: tempo.co) |
CILACAP: The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) confirmed Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines had been given temporary reprieve from her scheduled execution on Wednesday morning.
“The execution of Mary Jane has been postponed due to the request of the Philippines President [Benigno Aquino III] in relation to an alleged human trafficker who recently gave herself up in the Philippines,” AGO spokesman Tony Spontana told reporters on Wednesday morning.
Tony explained that the government of the Philippines had said that Veloso was needed to testify as a witness as she was one of the alleged trafficking victims of Maria Kristina Sergio, who voluntarily turned herself in to the police on Tuesday.
Veloso was among nine death row inmates slated to be executed in the early hours of Wednesday for drug trafficking charges. She was arrested with 2.6 kg of heroin at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta in 2010.
Veloso had previously filed two case review appeals at the Supreme Court but were rejected.
Defying intense pressure from the international community, the government executed eight death row prisoners early on Wednesday on Nusakambangan prison island near Cilacap in Central Java.
The eight were Indonesian Zainal Abidin, Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, Nigerians Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Raheem Agbaje Salami and Okwudili Oyatanze, Ghanaian Martin Anderson.
source: thejakartapost.com
