Indonesia | Australia wants judges probed before death penalty

Demonstrators gather at the Indonesian consulate in Sydney yesterday

Australia wants corruption allegations against Indonesian judges investigated before their death sentences against two Australian drug traffickers are carried out, the foreign minister said Monday.
The Australians, Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31, are among 10 drug traffickers who were given 72-hour notices over the weekend that they will be executed by a firing squad.
Indonesian authorities say that the Australians have exhausted all avenues of appeal.
But Foreign Minister Julie Bishop argued the men should not be executed while they have an unresolved case before Indonesia’s Constitutional Court and while Indonesia’s Judicial Commission was investigating claims of corruption in the pair’s original trial.
According to Australia’s Fairfax Media, Sukumaran and Chan’s original Indonesian lawyer Muhammad Rifan says that the trial judges had originally asked for a 1 million rupiah (USD77,000) bribe to pass sentences of less than 20 years.
Rifan alleged that the deal fell through after the judges later said that they had been ordered by senior legal and government figures to impose the death penalty.
The judges then “started asking for a lot more money” to provide a lesser sentence, Rifan said, but the pair did not have any more money, Fairfax Media reported yesterday.
Rifan could not be immediately contacted for comment yesterday.
The pair were sentenced to death in February 2006 for their leading roles in an Australian smuggling group dubbed “the Bali Nine.” They were arrested in 2005 after a tip-off from Australian police while trying to smuggle more than 8 kilograms of heroin from Bali to Sydney. The rest were sentenced to prison terms.
Sukumaran and Chan have provided sworn statements to the Judicial Commission, which safeguards the probity of judges, Fairfax Media reported.
Bishop said she contacted her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi on Sunday night in a bid to prevent the executions. She said the Australians should not be killed while two legal cases were outstanding. Rod McGuirk, Canberra, AP