Melbourne, February 18: Australian diplomats in Jakarta have told Indonesia that the possible execution of three Australians in Bali for drug smuggling will be a sensitive issue for Australia’s government in an election year, a report said.
As Australians Scott Rush, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran prepare last appeals against execution by firing squad, senior Australian diplomats met with the Indonesian attorney-general’s office for talks on the legal hurdles facing the trio,said on Thursday.
“They told us that it was a sensitive political issue ahead of the election,” Didiek Darmanto, a spokesman for Indonesia’s attorney-general, told the paper. No direct request had been made not to execute the three, Darmanto said.
The three Australians are members of a group known as the Bali Nine, arrested in April 2005 in Denpasar with 8.3 kg (18 lb) of heroin strapped to their bodies, worth $3.5 million. Rush and ringleaders Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death in 2006.
Since their arrests, successive Australian governments have been trying to ensure the death penalty is not carried out, including current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, favoured to win a second term in elections later this year.
Rudd has promised to raise the sentences with his Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono when court processes are concluded and if the death penalties still stand.
Any approach for clemency would be a sensitive issue for both countries, with some Indonesian lawmakers and local media likely to see any approach by Rudd to Yudhoyono as interference.
Australian junior minister Bill Shorten said Canberra’s opposition to the death penalty was not time sensitive.
“If individuals within the Australian department have indicated this, they are not authorised to and that is just simply not correct,” Shorten told Australian television.
Trade Minister Simon Crean described the meeting as a low-key courtesy call rather that an attempt to deflect Indonesian legal processes during elections in Australia.
“If you are going to make this sort of representation and bring it on strongly, that’s not where you would start, and that’s not the game we’re in,” Crean said.
If final appeals by the three, known in Indonesia as judicial reviews, are rejected, the only avenue remaining is a direct plea for clemency to Yudhoyono.
—-Agencies