(January 17, 2000) Following a Thai court's rejection last month of their third and final appeal for leniency, any minute may bring the dreaded rendezvous with the executioner for Abraham Huri and Yosef Ohana, two Israelis on death row in Bangkok's Bang Kwang Prison for heroin smuggling. Their panic shows.

Ohana, 36, a wasted, ashen-faced man, waits in quiet desperation with bloodshot eyes. Huri, a stocky man of 50, angrily bangs his fist on the iron bars that separate inmates from visitors. "Tell people in Israel we're innocent!" he shouts to a reporter. "Tell them they're going to kill us here!"

Foreign Minister David Levy has warned his Thai counterpart that Thailand would "severely damage" its friendly relations with Israel if it executes Huri and Ohana. And President Ezer Weizman has asked the Thai king to commute their sentences to life imprisonment. But Huri and Ohana remain angry with Israel for letting matters get this far. "It may be too late for help now," says Ohana. "Where was Israel when we needed it most?"

Huri and Ohana were arrested in 1994 near Chiang Mai in northern Thailand after, police say, they had run a security checkpoint and dumped 2.8 kilograms of heroin out the car window but subsequently returned to retrieve it. The Israelis denied the charges and claimed that the police framed them. A Thai court nevertheless sentenced them to death in 1997. In the course of their trial and appeals, they hired and fired five Thai lawyers, going to their last two appeals without one.

They claim that the Israeli Embassy never answered their requests to send a Hebrew-speaking interpreter to their trial, which was conducted only in Thai. It also refused to help them find a "competent" lawyer, they say, and ignored their pleas for help when they were routinely beaten in Chiang Mai prison. In desperation, they broke out of jail in 1995 but got only as far as the local bus station. "For two years, we've been begging the embassy to pressure the Thais to reevaluate our case according to international standards," says Huri, who served 10 years in Israel for drug trafficking. "But they've never lifted a finger."

"We did all we could," counters Oded Norman, assistant to the consul, who says embassy staffers regularly visit the prisoners, bringing them food and toiletries. "But we can't interfere with the rule of law in Thailand." It was the embassy, he adds, that alerted Israeli politicians to Huri and Ohana's pending execution. Norman insists that he was assured by Thai authorities that the execution of the two men will be stayed at least until the end of January. "We can only wait and hope."

But hope is what the prisoners are losing. Death-row convicts are executed without prior notice in Thailand. They are hauled out of their cells, blindfolded, strapped to a wooden cross, and shot in the head. In 1999, Thailand executed 13 convicts, though no foreigner has suffered that fate since 1992. "Only God knows what's going to happen to us," laments Ohana. "I get a fright every time they open my cell door."