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JAKARTA, Indonesia — This country has resumed executions for serious drug crimes after a four-year hiatus, and Indonesia’s attorney general has warned drug offenders on death row that their executions may now be accelerated.

The resumption follows a decision last year by Indonesia’s Constitutional Court that upheld the death penalty for serious drug offenses.

Two Nigerians convicted of drug trafficking were the first to be executed for drug crimes after the long break. The two, Samuel Iwachekwu Okoye and Hansen Anthony Nwaliosa, were put to death on June 26.

All executions in Indonesia are by firing squad. Prisoners are taken to a field to stand in front of 12 men who each fire one shot aimed at the chest. If that barrage does not kill the prisoner, a commander stands ready to fire a point-blank shot to the head.

Although Indonesia is known for some of the world’s strictest penalties for drug offenses, Kathryn Duff, a representative of Amnesty International, said the country was “not typically an enthusiastic executioner.”

Indeed, Indonesia had suspended executions for drug offenders while the court was considering the constitutional case and had not put drug offenders to death for two years before that while prisoners pursued judicial reviews and clemency, said A. H. Ritonga, a deputy attorney general.

Mr. Ritonga said the statement last month by the attorney general, Hendarman Supandji, about speeding up executions did not necessarily mean all 58 prisoners on death row for drug-related crimes would be executed soon. “Death row inmates will only be executed according to the law, after their appeals are exhausted,” Mr. Ritonga said, adding that they can also apply for clemency.

The president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has publicly said, however, that he would not pardon drug offenders.

Using the death penalty for drug offenses had been challenged by three Australians sentenced to death for trying to smuggle heroin off the resort island of Bali, and by two Indonesians. Last October, the Constitutional Court ruled that a constitutional amendment upholding the right to life did not apply to capital punishment. The court added that the right to life had to be balanced against the rights of the victims of drug trafficking.

Indonesia executed the two Nigerians on the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, as a message to those trafficking drugs through the country.

Indonesia is fighting an epidemic of drug abuse. Its population of 238 million includes an estimated 18 million addicts, according to the Ministry of Health.

There are 112 felons on death row. Seven have exhausted appeals and may be executed soon; they include three prisoners convicted in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, according to the attorney general’s office. Eighteen other prisoners have appealed for clemency.

Indonesia executed only three prisoners in 2006, the year before the death penalty challenge was filed. By comparison, according to Amnesty International, China is estimated to have executed at least 1,000 prisoners that year; Iran executed 177; and Pakistan, 82. In the United States, there were 53 executions.

Still, President Yudhoyono has been a staunch supporter of the death penalty since taking office in October 2004, rarely granting clemency.

He went ahead with the executions of three men who had been convicted in connection with attacks by a Christian militia on Muslims, despite concerns from international human rights groups that not all the evidence had been presented during their trial.

So far, Mr. Yudhoyono, a former general, also has not bowed to pressure from Australia to commute the death sentence of the three Australians imprisoned for trying to smuggle heroin.

The three are entitled to seek one more judicial review and, should that fail, to appeal for clemency.

By PETER GELLING

From “New York Times”

Link http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/world/asia/13indo.html?ref=world