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An Irish missionary in Indonesia says Brazilian Roderigo Gularte seemingly did not realise that he was going to be executed.
Gularte suffered from schizophrenia and he also had a bipolar disorder.
“I was joking with him, saying that ‘I am 72; I will be up there with you soon enough,” said Father Charles Burrows.
He said Gularte was calm as he was handcuffed by warders but became agitated when he was handed over to police outside the jail who put leg chains on him.
“I thought he’d got the message he was to be executed but … when the chains started to go on, he said to me, ‘Oh father, am I being executed?’,” Burrows said.
Gularte continued to hear voices in his final days telling him everything would be fine. “He believes the voices more than he does anybody else,” Burrows said.
Gularte was one of eight men who were executed in Indonesia shortly after midnight on April 29.
He was caught entering Indonesia in 2004 with six kilograms of cocaine hidden in surf boards, and was sentenced to death in 2005.
The condemned sang Amazing Grace together as flashlights shone on targets pinned to their hearts.
“We were in a tent nearby, also singing hymns,” Burrows said. “Unlike previous executions, they died relatively quickly.”
Burrows had also been assigned as a counselor to Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, 53, the Brazilian who was executed in the January round of shootings.
But the he never got onto Nusa Kambangan to be with the condemned man for his final hours.
“I rang them [Indonesian officials] about 20 times that day, but they didn’t call me back,” he recalled, describing the alleged bureaucratic fumble.
“Marco was crying alone in the cell, asking, ‘Where is my father; where is my father?'”
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News category: Asia Pacific, Top Story.
