Bali Nine duo ‘to be moved this week’
APP
Australian convicted drug smugglers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan will be moved from Bali to Nusakambangan island to be executed as early as this week, reports says.
A meeting is in progress where Bali’s chief prosecutor Momock Bambang Samiarso says authorities are discussing plans to move Chan and Sukumaran out of Kerobokan jail within days, AAP reports.
“It’s confirmed, this week,” he told reporters. “(The island) is all ready.”
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The timeframe for moving the men has shifted several times, however, as Indonesia prepares to execute 10 drug offenders – the most it has ever executed at one time.
Meanwhile, President Joko Widodo has been getting support for the policy from an audience of high school students.
The students from a Central Java school linked to the military visited the presidential palace in Jakarta on Monday, where he warned them of the dangers of drugs.
“Be careful, right now there are 50 people from our generation who die each day because of drugs,” he said, as quoted by news website detik.com.
Indonesian special police squad hold a drill ahead of the transfer of death-row prisoners Chan and Sukumaran. Photo: AAP
“That’s why we have to be strict. Do you all agree that drug dealers must be executed?”
The students replied in unison: “Agree!”
Mr Widodo told reporters: “Don’t let anyone try to intervene in our sovereign law.”
“About the executions of drug offenders, this is our sovereign law.”
The president has been contacted by leaders of several countries, including Australia, France, the Netherlands and Brazil, over the hardline drugs policy.
But Mr Widodo says no number of representations from foreign governments on behalf of their death row citizens will stop him carrying out the executions.
His friend and political ally, Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known better as Ahok, has revealed he has encouraged the president to abolish the death penalty, and he believes he is considering alternative views on the matter.
The special mobile brigade police on Friday rehearsed the transport of the men under heavy security to Bali’s airport, where the military could then fly them to Nusakambangan, an island off central Java.
Bali Nine drug mule: ‘shoot me’
Bali Nine’s Martin Stephens, serving a life sentence for his part, with his bride at Kerobokan Prison in 2011. Photo: AAP
Meanwhile, one of the Bali Nine drug mules sentenced to life in jail says he’s lost hope under Indonesia’s drugs policy and believes it would be more humane to execute him now, rather than let him die in jail.
Martin Stephens was one of the couriers caught in the 2005 heroin smuggling plot that has Chan and Sukumaran now days away from execution.
In a letter to The Australian newspaper, Stephens says Mr Widodo’s decision to refuse the pair clemency, despite their great strides in rehabilitation, makes him wonder what hope there is for freedom or redemption for other drug offenders, like himself.
“It is more humane to just take me out the back and shoot me like Andrew and Myuran,” he wrote.
– with AAP