From Jakarta
SPECULATIONS about which day the three Bali bombers will actually be executed have been ripe.
Late last month, when the Indonesian government announced it would take Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Mukhlas out of their prison cells for the firing squads early November, most guesses were putting D-day on Monday on November 3. That's yesterday.
On Monday, the "H" marking that was painted three days earlier on a nearby empty field in Tenggulun village in East Java - where the bodies of two of the three bombers would be transported to by helicopter - was partly washed off by rains. (Tenggulun is Amrozi's and Mukhlas' hometown. Samudra is from Banten, West Java.)
Sources said that the Monday schedule was postponed because of Prince Charles' visit to Indonesia from November 1st to the 5th.
Authorities are expecting tensions after the execution from hardline Muslims in Indonesia who may retaliate. Already, police have today received bomb threats targeted at the US and Australian embassies in Indonesia.
A state prosecutor told The Straits Times yesterday that the execution is now slated for this Friday, November 7. This may be the best guess for now: At the Cilacap seaport in Central Java, security has been beefed up for days, and early today, a barbed wire barraicade was set up.
Central Java and the Jakarta government have raised their security alert status to the highest, and at the Nusakambangan island prison, a quick boat trip away from Cilacap seaport on the Java island, prison officers have transferred the three bombers to isolation rooms, while their regular cells have been cleaned.
It remains to be seen if the executions will happen on Friday.
Read Bomb threat to embassies.