Mentally ill Brazilian Executed In Indonesia Was Unaware That He Was Being Put To Death In His Final Hours.

A mentally ill Brazilian executed in Indonesia was unaware that he was being put to death in his final hours, say his lawyer and priest.

Rodrigo Gularte, 42, was one of eight convicted drug smugglers killed by firing squad on Wednesday, despite pleas from his family that he was a paranoid schizophrenic.
He was arrested in 2004 while trying to enter Indonesia with 6kg of cocaine in his surfing gear.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff made repeated personal pleas for Indonesia to commute his sentence on humanitarian grounds because of his mental illness.
When Gularte was given 72 hours' notice of his execution, his lawyer, Ricky Gunawan, said his client was oblivious to what was happening.
"He had a delusional mind," Mr Gunawan told the AFP news agency.
"When we said your death sentence will be implemented, he said, 'What death sentence? I will not be sentenced to death'.
"I'm not sure whether he really 100% understood he would be executed."
When Mr Gunawan asked what his final requests were, he said the Brazilian was "just laughing".
He said Gularte asked him: "Is it just like Aladdin, when we ask for three wishes?
"When we tried to talk about the serious things ... he kept avoiding, to other silly things. He was calm, as if nothing was happening."
Gularte also believed the water in the prison was poisoned, his lawyer said.

Father Charlie Burrows - an Irish priest who counselled Gularte in his final days - said the Brazilian did not understand what was happening despite his efforts to explain.

"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?'" Father Burrows told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"He didn't get angry, he was annoyed.

"The big thing was, 'Oh, why is this happening, this is not right, I made a small mistake and why can't they just leave me in jail on the island and I won't give anybody any trouble'."

Father Burrows said Gularte continued to hear voices in his head.

"Everybody was being prepared for days before and everybody knew there was going to be an execution," he said.

"But because he hears these voices and he reckons because the voices told him, 'No, everything is going to be grand', he believes the voices more than he does anybody else."

Gularte, along with two Australians, four Nigerians and an Indonesian were put to death close to the prison on the island of Nusakambangan in Central Java.

The men refused to wear blindfolds, sang hymns and prayed as they went to their deaths.

Brazil expressed strong regret over Gularte's death as Indonesia faced a storm of international protest for killing the prisoners.

Australia has withdrawn its ambassador in protest at what it called "cruel and unnecessary" executions of Bali Nine duo Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Indonesia has defended the executions as vital in its "war" on drugs.

Culled from Sky News.

World's Oldest Person Misao Okawa , Dies at age 117

Misao Okawa, the world's oldest person according to Guinness World Records, has died at the age of 117.

Okawa passed away Wednesday morning in Osaka, Japan, Tadahi Uchimura, a local official from the city told CNN.

She left behind three children, four grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Okawa was born on March 5, 1898.

Her family ran a Kimono shop in Osaka, Satoshi Yoshioka, an employee at the nursing home where she had lived since 1997 told CNN.

"She was a person with mild character, and loved to eat so much. Her favorite food was sushi and udon noodles," Yoshioka said.

"She had eaten a lot of cake for her birthday last March 5. "

"However, in the last 10 days she stopped eating. I think eating was her motivation to live, and when she lost it, she passed away."

According to Guiness World Records, the oldest person ever was Jeanne Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997.

Culled from CNN

Profile of Major General Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria's President Elect

General Muhammadu Buhari ruled Nigeria before, as one of a line of military strongmen who dominated the country between 1966 and 1999.

A military coup brought Buhari to power in late 1983 -- closing a brief period of popular rule by Shehu Shagari -- and another military coup ousted him from power in August 1985.

Buhari's 20-month rule was known for what he described as a "war on indiscipline," a tough regime which some say was marred by human rights abuses.

The 72-year-old retired major general's experience as a military ruler has been viewed as a plus by some and a minus by others in present-day Nigeria, where the government has been locked in a deadly battle with the militant group Boko Haram.

This year alone, the extremists have killed at least 1,000 civilians, Human Rights Watch says. The ongoing violence in the Northeast has put security -- along with corruption and the economy -- at the top of the election agenda.

Ayo Johnson, a documentary filmmaker and analyst on African affairs, told CNN earlier this month that the elections would come down to who could make Nigeria feel safe.

"Many Nigerians will not forget (Buhari) was a military leader, during a dictatorship," Johnson said. "Or maybe they will feel that they need a military leader to address fundamental problems such as terrorism."

Buhari has campaigned as a born-again democrat to allay fears about his strict military regime, while stressing that Nigeria's security needs to be the next government's focus.

"It's a question of security. Whether I was a former military officer or a politician through and through, when there is insecurity of this scale in the country, that takes the priority," he said from his campaign plane.

'Judged harshly'

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour in February, Buhari blamed President Goodluck Jonathan's government for repeated setbacks in the fight against extremists.

"The misappropriation of resources provided by the government for weapons means the Nigerian military is unable to beat Boko Haram," he said.

Asked by Amanpour about abuses allegedly committed during his own previous leadership, Buhari said there was "a degree of accuracy" in the claims.

But he said he had ruled Nigeria as part of a military administration.

"When that military administration came under my leadership, we suspended -- as a military then -- part of that constitution that we felt would be difficult for us to operate and as also a consensus," he said. "I think I'm being judged harshly as an individual that what happened during a military administration can be extended under a multiparty democratic system."

Buhari's campaign was also fiercely anti-corruption. He ran under the slogan of "new broom," and his supporters were often pictured holding brooms in the lead-up to the vote.

Previous candidacies

The 2015 presidential race was Buhari's fourth attempt at leadership since he was ousted from power in 1985.

In 2003, Buhari -- then with the All Nigeria People's Party -- lost to Olusegun Obasanjo in an election during which EU observers reported widespread irregularities.

He lost again to Umaru Yar'Adua in the 2007 election, which was widely condemned for rampant vote-rigging, violence, theft of ballot boxes and intimidation.

After Yar'Adua's death in 2010, Jonathan rose from vice president to president and Buhari challenged him in the 2011 elections as a candidate from the Congress for Progressive Change.

Buhari had helped found the party a year earlier, saying it was "a solution to the debilitating, ethical and ideological conflicts in my former party, the ANPP."

Buhari is a Muslim from Nigeria's poorer North, while Jonathan hails from a Christian and animist South that is rich with oil.

After Jonathan's victory in 2011, amid accusations of vote-rigging, violent riots broke out in the North.

Armed protesters took to the streets chanting Buhari's name, and more than 800 people were killed in the post-election violence.

Buhari's office issued a statement calling reports of burning of places of worship places a "sad, unfortunate and totally unwarranted development."

"I must say that this is a dastardly act (that) is not initiated by any of our supporters and therefore cannot be supported by our party," said Buhari's spokesman Yinka Odumakin. "I must emphasize that this is purely a political matter, and it should not in any way be turned into an ethnic, religious or regional one."

Ahead of this year's election, Jonathan and Buhari signed a nonviolence pact, the Abuja Accord, in January. On March 26 they renewed their pledge and reiterated their commitment to "free, fair and credible elections."

But violent protests broke out after polling on Saturday. Protesters fired gunshots and torched a local electoral office in Nigeria's oil-rich Rivers state on Sunday as they marched to protest the elections, amid claims of vote-rigging and voter intimidation.

Both candidates called for calm, with Buhari, who contested this year's vote as part of the All Progressives Congress, tweeting: "Fellow Nigerians, I urge you to exercise patience and vigilance as we wait for all results to be announced."

After the protests in Rivers, his party demanded the elections there be canceled. But Nigeria's electoral commission decided the results would stand, saying it "did not believe the allegations were substantial enough to require the cancellation/rescheduling" of the Rivers poll.

Secondary education claims

According to his campaign website, Buhari is from Daura in Nigeria's northern Katsina state and is married with eight children.

His military training began in 1963 and included stints in the United Kingdom, India and the United States. Buhari was the first chairman of the Nigerian Petroleum Corporation, the site says.

Elements of Buhari's biography were questioned in the run-up to the March 28 election.

After weeks of speculation and an ongoing legal battleover allegations that Buhari failed to complete his secondary school education, a Nigerian court on March 25 cleared the way for him to run in the presidential race after adjourning the case until April 22.

As a Sunni Muslim from the North, Buhari appears to have moved to address any concerns his appointment could be detrimental to non-Muslim Nigerians --approximately half the country's population, according to the CIA Factbook.

A blog post on his campaign website headed "Buhari will never Islamise Nigeria" describes a campaign ceremony in January in Imo state.

Imo Gov. Rochas Okorocha, it says, "dismissed suggestions of plans by Muhammadu Buhari to 'Islamize' Nigeria," telling the audience Buhari's long-time cook and driver were Christians and his youngest daughter had married a Christian.

Buhari has also not been immune to the violence plaguing northern Nigeria. Last year, he was targeted in a suicide bombing that killed at least 15 people in the city of Kaduna. An earlier blast in the city the same day had been aimed at a Muslim cleric.

 Culled from CNN