2016’s Most Heartbreaking Stories

In July, an Indonesian judge sentenced Nigerian Michael Titus Igweh to death by firing squad, after a controversial court trial found him guilty of drug-related offences.

In his final appeal, Igweh, who had been on death row for 13 years, told the court that the confession he made to the police while in detention was given under duress, “I was constantly beaten, and my genitals electrocuted until I was helpless, in fact, I was threatened to be shot.”

Igweh requested a fair retrial.

But in the end, neither Igweh’s pleas for a fair retrial nor the international community’s appeal for clemency was enough to talk the Indonesian authorities in to sparing him from the executioner’s bullet a few days later.