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Bali Nine decision ‘can’t change’

Indonesia’s attorney-general says he will not wait for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran’s lawyers to enter a fresh legal challenge of their death penalties before setting a date for their executions.

HM Prasetyo says his plans to execute the Australians and other drug offenders on death row this month are moving forward.

This comes despite the Bali Nine duo’s lawyers planning a challenge of the presidential decree that denied them clemency in the State Administrative Court.

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Mr Prasetyo predicts the challenge will fail.

“Clemency is a prerogative which cannot be hindered or challenged by anyone,” he told reporters in Jakarta on Tuesday.

“That’s the prerogative right attached to the authority who has it.

“The administrative court cannot change that decision.”

But the attorney-general also said it was also open to the president to reconsider clemency requests.

Jakarta lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis plans to challenge the president’s decision to issue a blanket denial of clemency to death row drug offenders, arguing an abuse of process.

President Joko Widodo has already sent six of 64 of these prisoners to the firing squad, and Mr Prasetyo is still determining how many will be executed alongside Chan and Sukumaran.

Earlier, Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly said the political turmoil in Jakarta over a dispute between the police and anti-corruption commission could delay the executions.

“I think it may be delayed a little bit,” he told reporters.

But he also said executions were the authority of the attorney-general, not him.

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