[SBM] I was also wondering if anyone has run across any prior criminal cases tried in Indonesia involving Americans?
Several weeks ago I was interested in finding out if there were currently any Americans under a death sentence in Indonesia. The only case I could find was that of Frank Amado, and a 2013 source says he is the first American to be sentenced to death in that country, so Im guessing hes still the only one as of today.
Ive written a rather long summary of his case for my fellow Websleuths. Ive included a lot of detail because the case might be interesting for those concerned with Sheila von Wiese-Macks murder because it concerns one Americans account of his arrest, pretrial detention, interactions with the police, his trial, and his prison experiences. It also highlights the fact that few people appear concerned that he could face a firing squad and that the U.S. State Department is doing nothing to fight his death sentence. There are important differences from the SvWM case, however, notably that Amado was convicted of drug trafficking and his crime didn't take place in Denpasar (or anywhere in Bali) but in Jakarta.
Frank Amado graduated from a Florida high school in 1982 and someone who knew him in the period after that described him as always very entrepreneurial. In 1985, when he was 21 years old, he was arrested for having a marijuana plant growing in a pot on his back porch. A month later he was arrested for having a pistol in his car. The weapon had had its serial number removed.
In 2004 he moved to the state of Washington and a few years later he moved to southeast Asia. He married, and opened an internet café in Bangkok. That business failed, he was divorced, and he moved to Jakarta.
On October 19th of 2009, Amado was arrested in Jakarta by the Indonesian drug enforcement agency and was found to have a pound of crystal meth on his person. Police found an additional 11 pounds of it in his Jakarta apartment. Apparently he confessed to storing the drugs for someone else and to transporting drugs to a distributor. He was 46 years old at the time of his arrest.
Amado was found guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced to death on August 4, 2010.
This article in the Tampa Bay Times (Amado went to high school in that area), describes his background, his case, and his current situation:
http://www.tampabay.com/features/hu...e-for-former-dunedin-man-on-death-row/1150991
It also says that the U.S. State Department wont have anything to do with his case:
Aside from sending someone to visit him every three months to see if he is in reasonably good health and not being tortured, the U.S. State Department says it will have nothing to do with Amado's case.
"The facts are out there. He has admitted to the facts. According to local statutes the crime is punishable by death, and, unfortunately, we see nothing irregular in the case," said Paul Belmont, press attache for the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
The United States can't ask for preferential treatment for an American, said Belmont, who described Amado as "an American citizen with financial problems who was talked into doing this work for quick cash."
If all his appeals fail, the article says that one day a guard will come to his cell and tell him he has 72 hours left to live. It goes to describe what it claims Indonesian witnesses to firing squads say will then happen:
Before daylight, he will be driven to a deserted stretch of beach wearing white pants and a white collarless shirt with a red cross over his heart. A black hood will be placed over his head.
As the sun comes up, his hands and feet will be tied to a wooden pole and about a dozen police officers will aim at his heart. Half of them will have blanks in their guns, the other half bullets.
His mother and sister will be notified to claim the body.
There is a blog about his case, Free Frank Amado, which published a post in 2011 written by Amado himself, where he rages against the Indonesian system.
He mentions another Americans case:
I have a friend name Adeel, also an American inmate here, a very friendly, amiable, good-natured, 27 year-old guy, who was here on vacation and happened to be in a car with the son of a woman who was dealing drugs. There was no evidence whatsoever that he was involved in any wrong-doing, and the woman even testified that she didnt even know him and had never seen him before in her life. After his family was extorted by their lawyer, the prosecution, and judges in his case to the tune of U.S. $20,000, he received a 15 year sentence! And this is for him having done nothing and there being no evidence to prove otherwise.
Amado says that he was beaten by police and that the drugs brought into court during his trial were not the same drugs that he was caught with. (I have no idea if these allegations are true, but apparently the State Department doesnt believe them or doesnt care or has political reasons to remain silent.) See:
http://freefrankamado.wordpress.com...ances-surrounding-his-case-the-death-penalty/
The blog Death Penalty News has discussed the Amado case. Theyve published an interview with him where he describes being asked to pay bribes, says that his boss in the drug operation (not a Yank, but an Iranian) was sentenced to only 15 years because he paid LE $50,000, describes threats of violence by police against him, and recounts violence by investigators visited upon others in his circle, including his girlfriend, who he says was completely innocent of any involvement.
He describes prison life:
I feel like I'm a walking ATM machine here because, even though all my money has been taken from me and I'm subsisting on what little my 75 year-old mother can send, the public opinion appears to be, "Well, this guy is from America, so he must be rich, because, even though most Westerners would think my existence here is horrible and substandard even for someone living in extreme poverty, it is still a far cry from how the low income Indonesian prisoners live, whose sometimes spoiled food is left by the entrances to the cell blocks on the ground in large trash bags which I, for the longest time, thought was trash.
He concludes his description with this vivid line:
Incidentally, there are many skinny, malnourished cats and rats running around the Salemba campus and they take a wide girth around these trash bags of nutrition.
He says the pretrial detention facility he was held in was a dungeon:
The title of "dungeon" might seem extreme, but how else would you refer to a place in which you are locked for 4 months without seeing daylight except for when you are occasionally being dragged to an interrogation, or what can be seen through tiny holes that barely allow for adequate ventilation, a place where you are constantly reminded you have absolutely no human rights, and even what is given to you in essentials for survival can be instantly stolen by corrupt and often sadistic guards and police, a place in which the food scraps you receive frequently cause abdominal cramps, a place where every week you are suffering from either skin sores and lesions, diarrhea, flu, eye infections, sore throats, and coughs?
He believes the police took the drugs they confiscated from him and sold them for their own profit. He says theres a high rate of suicide in his prison and that others have died under mysterious circumstances.
He says the Indonesian system is rife with corruption:
I think that justice is one thing, but to have someone who works in the most visibly corrupt nation and government in the world, where the system of corruption involves practically the entirety of its population, telling me that I'm being given the death penalty because I was involved in "corrupting the children of Indonesia, is basically adding insult to injury. I mean, after my lawyer "negotiated" with the prosecutor, I was told that for a mere $50,000 "gift" I could have a sentence of 15 years! What kind of justice is that? This is also why it was no surprise when I recently found out about a well-off inmate here, whose name I can't disclose, who was apprehended with 2 kilos of ice, but was able to pay $300,000, so he received a whopping 1 year sentence!
http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2011/01/frank-amado-actual-story.html
Theres a news story in the Jakarta Globe, published the day after his conviction, which describes the ring Amado was involved in as an international drug syndicate. It also says, The court gave Amado, who was said to have changed his testimony throughout the trial, and his legal representative Sugiyono seven days to decide whether to appeal or directly seek clemency from the president.
http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.c...ath-penalty-for-trafficking-narcotics/389533/
Theres a 56 minute documentary about him which apparently describes the terrible prison conditions he lives in and has him explaining that hes learned his lesson. I havent seen it, but you can read about it here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3432888/
His sister, Monique Amado, set up a GoFundM* page for him in August of 2012. She was looking to raise $25,000 but in the past 26 months has gathered only $615. I believe I am not supposed to link to such sites, so Ill leave it to those with sufficient interest to find it on their own. Its interesting that a drug trafficker cant raise a thousand dollars in the space of over two years, but an Oak Park man accused of murder could raise over $10,000 in something like a month. Go figure!
Theres a ten-minute YouTube video discussing Amados case. It features a rather dotty British lady huddled under a broken brolly while hugging a hedge who awkwardly reads out an account of the case which she seems not to have even glanced at before the camera started rolling. Its odd but strangely compelling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5tgaTlwao
It had only 170 views as of a few hours ago. This, combined with the puny fundraising results of his sister, makes me wonder if people in the know simply dont believe Amados boldest claims. (I believe some of what he says, disbelieve some of what he says, and think that many things which may have happened to him were specifically related to the fact that he was busted on drug charges and would not be relevant to Heather and Tommy's treatment.) On the other hand, I am opposed to the death penalty, so I have a certain sympathy for Amado, in spite of believing him to be guilty of the crimes he was charged with.
I feel pity for him, particularly because it seems he hasnt learned what Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran of the Bali 9, also currently facing the death penalty, have learned: that your best chance for clemency in the Indonesian system is to accept the system for what it is, and provide the authorities with the best possible reasons for commuting a sentence, which includes showing respect and humility.
Amado harps on and on about the actual provenance of the drugs produced at his trial. Even if he is right about those drugs, it is still nothing but a technicality, and in no way undermines his guilt. The webpages supporting Amado all quote him as admitting hes guilty of the drug charges, and it seems rightly or wrongly Indonesian justice doesnt get het up over technicalities.
The post by Amado on the Free Frank Amado blog closes with this:
I dont deserve a death sentence, but if the alternative is to spend the rest of my life languishing in some rats nest island prison with no chance of ever experiencing freedom again, a firing squad seems like a welcome alternative.
I wonder if a pair of other Americans who may soon experience the hospitality of an Indonesian prison will feel the same?
