Indonesia Set to Execute Drug Smugglers
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Indonesia appears likely to press ahead with the executions of nine drug criminals on Tuesday, despite last-ditch appeals by Australia's foreign minister for a stay of execution so that claims of corruption during the trials of the two Australian prisoners could be investigated.
The families of the Australian convicts paid an anguished final visit to their loved ones on Tuesday, wailing in grief as ambulances carrying empty white coffins arrived at their prison.
Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, told news media that she had received a letter from Indonesia on Monday night that offered no indication of a reprieve for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan.
Earlier on Monday, she had asked for a stay in their executions, saying allegations in the Australian media that their judges had requested money to commute the death sentences were "very serious".
The two are among nine drug convicts, mostly foreigners, who are due to be executed by a firing squad as soon as Tuesday night.
However, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said that such concerns should have been conveyed a decade ago when the case went through the courts.
A former lawyer of the prisoners, Muhammad Rifan, told Australia's Fairfax Media on Monday that Indonesian judges had requested more than $100,000 in return for prison terms of less than 20 years, Al Jazeera reported.
But Rifan said the judges later told him they had been ordered by senior legal and government members in Jakarta to impose a death penalty, so the deal fell through.
The members of the Bali Nine were arrested at the main airport on the holiday island of Bali in April 2005 for trying to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin to Australia.
The Indonesian authorities had been tipped off by Australia's Federal Police.
The seven other members of the Bali Nine, all Australians, have been jailed in Indonesia but do not face the death penalty.
