Two Nigerians convicted of smuggling illegal drugs, have been executed by Indonesian authorities, to mark the United Nations' anti-drugs day, officials said.

Samuel Okoye, 37, and Hansen Nwaolisa, 40, were arrested at Jakarta's international airport in 2001, each allegedly carrying more than three kilogrammes of heroin. They have been held at a high-security prison on Nusakambangan island since their conviction.

“They were executed tonight,” Attorney General, Hendarman Supandji, told reporters He refused further comments, but the country's anti-narcotics agency said they would use their deaths before a firing squad to mark the international anti-drugs day.

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The country's television footage showed the wives and children of the convicts being escorted to the island, along with ambulances carrying two coffins.

Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to death in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim and socially conservative nation of 235 million people, and foreigners have not been exempted.

About 140 people are currently on death row, most for drug-related crimes. Also, no fewer than 30 persons, mostly Nigerians, were arrested in Switzerland after a vast African drugs trafficking network in Europe was dismantled, Swiss police said on Thursday.

Some 21 kilogrammes of cocaine and 725,000 dollars (N84.8 million) were seized over the course of a nearly year-long investigation.

The authorities involved in the investigation included France,Belgium, Germany and Austria, a statement by Vaud cantonal police said.

It began when customs officials at Geneva's airport found more than 10kg of cocaine hidden in the suitcase of a Camerounian woman in July 2007.

Nearly equal amount was found in the luggage of a Togolese man last October, police said. “Thirty suspects have been charged with drug trafficking and most are still in detention in Switzerland.

A used car dealer among them has also been charged with money-laundering,” Vaud police spokesman, Jean-Christophe Sauterel, said.

A Togolese living in Belgium, the presumed boss of the organisation in Europe, was among those arrested in the Swiss city of Bienne, the statement said.

 

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