AGENCIES
JAKARTA, APRIL 25
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ali nine organisers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran may have just three days left to live after they were officially given 72 hours notification of their executions on Saturday.
The condemned men are bracing to be killed on Tuesday night however Attorney-General spokesman Tony Spontana said no date had been set and they may have longer.
Their Australian lawyer Julian McMahon returned from Nusakambangan, where the men will be executed, with three self-portraits painted by Sukumaran. One painting, still wet and dated April 25, carried the haunting inscription: “The 72 hours just started”. The second dated April 24 was called “Strange Day”. And the third, also dated April 25, said: “Our new prints: A bad sleep last night”.Under Indonesian law the earliest a prisoner can be executed once they receive official notification is in 72 hours time.
The men’s devastated families, who are scrambling to get to Cilacap, will now be allowed to visit the men every day in their isolation cells on Nusakambangan before they are shot by a 12 man firing squad. Indonesian authorities today advised Australian consular officials that the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will be scheduled imminently at Nusa Kambangan prison in central Java.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said nothing can be gained and much will be lost if the Australians are executed.
“Legal challenges remain before the Constitutional Court and Judicial Commission, which raise fundamental questions about the integrity of their sentencing and the clemency process. These claims should be heard.,” she said.
Ms Bishop said she had spoken to Sukumaran’s mother Raji on Friday and assured her the government would continue to seek clemency from Indonesian President Joko Widodo for both men.
A French man on death row with Chan and Sukumaran won a temporary reprieve from the firing squad but any hope for the nine others has disappeared.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir told Fairfax Media the French Embassy was not among those summoned to discuss the imminent executions because Serge Atlaoui still had a legal case before the Administrative Court.
The Indonesian man, Zainal Abidin’s death already seems a fait accompli despite Monday’s court ruling, with his family contacted by authorities on Friday to ask where and how they wanted his body buried.
“It really upsets the family. It’s as if they already know the outcome, that it’s going to get rejected,” said Abidin’s lawyer Ade Yuliawan.
In Gallipoli, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he did not know when the executions would be carried out. “I guess there’s always hope while there’s life but obviously these are late days.”
The Attorney-General’s Office has repeatedly said it would wait for all legal processes to be exhausted because it wanted to execute the 10 drug felons simultaneously.
Several prisoners besides Atlaoui have ongoing legal processes, including the Australians, Filipina maid Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, and Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, who is schizophrenic.
But the Indonesian government insists they have no remaining channels of appeal.
“We only sent notification to embassies whose nationals have exhausted their legal avenues,” Mr Arrmanatha said.
Lawyers for Veloso on Friday lodged a request for a second judicial review on the grounds she was “primarily a human trafficking victim in the first place, and therefore, must be protected”.
Her Indonesia lawyer Ismail Muhammad, who visited Veloso on the island on Saturday with her two young sons and other family members, said they didn’t yet know whether it would be accepted by the Supreme Court.
But the Foreign Ministry’s Mr Arrmanatha said Indonesian law stated there could only be one judicial review.
Lawyers for the Australians are challenging the clemency laws in the Constitutional Court and the Judicial Commission is investigating allegations the judges who sentenced Chan and Sukumaran to death offered bribes for lighter sentences.
However, any ruling made on the country’s clemency laws by the Constitutional Court would not be retrospective and the Attorney-General has made it clear the case would not prevent the executions from proceeding.
