The 'worst curse'

Indonesia | Human-rights advocates cry foul as minority Christians are executed | Priya Abraham

Six years ago a quasi-Christian militia in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, kidnapped police intelligence officer Irwanto Hasan and four of his friends. The "Red Group" mutilated the four and would have killed Hasan but for one man's intervention. That man, Fabianus Tibo, rescued and shuttled him to safety in a nearby village. "This person loved to help people," Hasan said in court testimony four years ago.

Such testimony might have helped save the 60-year-old Tibo and two other Roman Catholic men from execution Sept. 22, but the judge in their trial never admitted it for consideration. After five years in prison, Tibo, Marinus Riwu, 48, and Dominggus da Silva, 42, went before a firing squad. Their crime, officially, was leading attacks against Muslims in 2000, including one by gun and machete on an Islamic school where scores of men were hiding.