Jewel Topsfield, Amilia Rosa, Jakarta – Minutes before Indian truck driver Gurdip Singh was due to be killed by a firing squad the power went out in his cell on Indonesia's penal island Nusakambangan.
Four men had already been taken out to the killing field. Singh, who was sentenced to death for carrying 300 grams of heroin when arrested at the airport, was number five.
"They came, I said 'let me take a shower first'," Singh told Fairfax Media from Pasir Putih prison on Nusakambangan. "After I was ready, they prayed for me, the officer placed the handcuffs on one of my hands when suddenly the power went out."
It was pitch black, outside the rain was torrential. When the power came back on Singh saw the prison governor walk towards them. "The prison governor said it to my ear: 'Singh, it is cancelled'."
Singh was among 14 convicted drug felons who were due to be shot dead on July 29 last year. Ten of them received a dramatic last minute reprieve for reasons never properly explained.
"It is still not clear until now why," Singh says. "No one told me why." A year later there are still no answers. No official stay of execution has been granted.
"This situation has affected mental and physical health conditions of those who were spared," says a joint statement by human rights groups submitted to the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review of Indonesia earlier this year.
Fairfax Media asked the Indonesian Attorney-General's office if there are any plans for executions this year. "The Attorney-General has repeatedly said that we are still studying the cases thoroughly," spokesman Muhammad Rum replied.
Indonesia takes an unapologetically hardline approach to drug trafficking. The death penalty can be enforced against those who import even small amounts into the country.
Eighteen drug traffickers have faced the firing squad since the 2014 election of President Joko Widodo, who has billed executions as "important shock therapy".
Most of those killed – including Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan – were foreign drug criminals, whom Indonesia largely blames for destroying its future generations with drugs.
The death penalty enjoys popular support in Indonesia; media polls have typically showed about 75 per cent approval. But it has come under fresh scrutiny after the nation's ombudsman condemned the execution of a Nigerian man on the night Singh narrowly avoided death.
One of the four killed on July 29 was Nigerian Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke, who was arrested in 2003 after police found heroin on the premises of a Jakarta restaurant he owned.
Ombudsman Ninik Rahayu accused the Attorney-General's office of "maladministration" at a press conference a year after his execution. She found three violations of the law:
Jefferson's appeal to the president for clemency was still underway, meaning he could have been pardoned. A judicial review of his case in the Central Jakarta District Court was never processed due to incomplete documents. Jefferson's lawyers were never told what documents were still missing Jefferson and his family were not given 72 hours' notice of his death, something mandatory under Indonesian law
"The rights of the death convict should be fulfilled before an execution is carried out," Rahayu says "In the case of Humphrey [Jefferson] this didn't happen. And this is completely against the law. Although it is too late this should not reoccur in the future."
The Attorney-General office's spokesman, Muhammad Rum, insists the executions were done according to law. But the Ombudsman's findings have renewed calls for a moratorium on the death penalty in Indonesia.
"Amnesty International, ICJR (Institute for Criminal Justice Reform) KontraS (Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence) and LBH Masyarakat (Community Legal Aid Institute) believe the Ombudsman's decisions echoes the organisations' findings documented in many other death penalty cases," Amnesty said in a statement. "[These] point to systemic flaws in the administration of justice in Indonesia."
There has been little talk of another round of executions this year, with government anti-drug rhetoric focused on shooting drug dealers who resist arrest.
In February Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo said they had been put on hold while Indonesia lobbied for international support to become a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Elections are in June next year.
But the future still looks grim for Singh, whose clemency plea was this year rejected by President Jokowi, as he is popularly known.
"The honorable Mr President, my life and death is at your mercy," Singh wrote in a letter pleading with him to reconsider. "I beg the death penalty be changed to no matter how heavy a prison time to give me a chance to be a father to educate the children who I love."