Thread: Bali Executions

Originally Posted by wasabi

I love being in Australian company, Us Poms admire them on their tough stance on Immigration.
Plucky buggers.

Tough stance prime facie.

That last time I was in Sydney, the Bangladeshi taxi driver that had been there two weeks asked me to type my destination into the GPS.

Originally Posted by taxexile

Although the Australians can have no complaints about their convictions,the evidence used to convict the Filipino girl is flimsy to put it mildly.

Exactly, as a parallel look deeper into the conviction of one of the filipinos executed in China and you will find one was stitched-up too. Unfortunately there are those too narrow minded to look further than somebody being convicted.

Originally Posted by Koojo

Piss off, Keating was great.
Called the Malaysian PM a recalcitrant, can't remember what for.

I couldn't remember either, so just looked it up. Here it is for the elucidation of all :

First, to set the stage, come back to Seattle in November, 1993. Snow is gusting towards the city, but Australia's Prime Minister, Paul Keating, is about to leave in the sunniest of moods. The first APEC summit has just been held and Indonesia's President Suharto has agreed to hold a second summit the next year.
Keating has just completed the final item on his Seattle itinerary — a visit to the Boeing factory. The Australian hacks gather for a doorstop. For them, 'Keating triumphs in Seattle' was the story from the previous day. Now they want to talk about Dr Mahathir, the one Asia Pacific leader who declined to attend. Take it away, Prime Minister:

Keating: 'Please don't ask me any more questions about Dr Mahathir. I couldn't care less, frankly, whether he comes or not.'
Question: Will you see him next year, Prime Minister?
Keating: 'Yes. I'll see him in his own right. Malaysia is a country which Australia has interests with, and which is a neighbour, and I'll see him on those terms. But APEC is bigger than all of us; Australia, the US and Malaysia and Dr Mahathir and any other recalcitrants. I mean, APEC is a very big development in world affairs and, I think, ushers in a period of important cooperation.'

By Keating standards it was the gentlest of swipes. But Dr Mahathir had just been hugely outplayed — even outclassed — by the success of the summit he'd boycotted.

Mahathir demanded an apology from Keating, and threatened to reduce diplomatic ties and trade drastically with Australia, which became an enormous concern to Australian exporters. Some Malaysian officials talked of launching a "Buy Australian Last" campaign; Keating subsequently apologised to Mahathir over the remark. Keating dismantled the century-old protectionism that had been present in Australia, fueling a productivity drive in the free market and increasing Australian living standards.

By Keating standards it was the gentlest of swipes. But Dr Mahathir had just been hugely outplayed — even outclassed — by the success of the summit he'd boycotted.

Mahathir demanded an apology from Keating, and threatened to reduce diplomatic ties and trade drastically with Australia, which became an enormous concern to Australian exporters. Some Malaysian officials talked of launching a "Buy Australian Last" campaign; Keating subsequently apologised to Mahathir over the remark.

It's always best not to say something that you'll have to apologize for at a later date.

Wouldn't you agree ?

So who really got outclassed ?

Note: If you're caught smuggling 10 kg of heroin into Australia you'd probably be sentenced to 20 years (possibly along with a fine that you wouldn't pay).

Possibly the two Aussies never imagined getting busted prior to the flight. Oh well, live and learn.

Indonesia like some other countries will sentence you to death simply for possession of drugs. That is their code of law.
You've got to understand that risk prior to deciding to take the chance to make more money then flipping burgas at Happy Jacks.
Real world. Your life. What choices do YOU make ?

Originally Posted by hazz

The fenchmans case does rather remind me of that anglothai couple that were convicted of drug offences simply because they were present in the aprtment block at the time of the raid.

It will be rather interesting what happens to the french chap as France has form for strong arming foreign governments to get its chaps home. I'm thinking of those french government employees that got themselves arrested & convicted committing acts of terrorism in new zealand.

Well called. The reports this morning indicate he has a reprieve for the time being.

Originally Posted by PeeCoffee

Indonesia like some other countries will sentence you to death simply for possession of drugs. That is their code of law.

Nope,

That's a pile of shit right there mate, If that was true Indonesia and Asia in general would not have enough bullets to Execute the dumb arsed Aussie tards that have been caught smuggling or carrying drugs.

Out of the Bali Nine only these two are being topped as they set the gig up.

Andrew Chan. 26 year old ring leader. No record, no history. Where did he get the set up money? Why was the drug supplier, Miss Cherry never arrested? How did she bring in the entire amount from Bangkok that would then take 5 mules to bring to Australia?

If you believe those two kids set it up on their own you are stupider than I thought.

The worst conviction for murder is pre-meditated.

We now have a country that is going to be guilty of this crime - Indonesia

We are all in glass houses - a drug smuggler next time could be your son or daughter, where is the compassion?

^

I'm sorry mate but your quote is seriously fuked.

These two loaded up the mules with the gear, they are getting topped for this crime.

They set the others up for what they are enduring now.

Fair enough to discuss it but don't start taking their crime down.

I'm not for topping them, it's not my call but if they are topped Its not my cry either.

Originally Posted by Iceman123

The worst conviction for murder is pre-meditated.

We now have a country that is going to be guilty of this crime - Indonesia

We are all in glass houses - a drug smuggler next time could be your son or daughter, where is the compassion?

Don't understand Asia do you, kill a person is a lessor crime then an act that attacks society as a whole.
Shot a rifle or plant a bomb, with intent, no one dies, which is the lessor crime.

^

They sort of like to top smack smugglers because it fucks up so many lives.

A punter who shoots someone kills one but a smack smuggler kills many at the end of the day.

That's why they justify topping them.

Here's a point, not really relevant, but that cow Bishop keeps saying they have been rehabilitated.
If that's the case, Australia with a 76% re offending rate and an average cost of $95,000 per prisoner per year, should be looking at the Indo system.
Must work better.

If it is not really relevant, why make it?

Crosses have been inscribed with Tuesday's date.



Chilling evidence the end is near | News.com.au

the whole thing stinks like the third world corrupted toilet it is.

'They wanted $130,000 ... and then more': explosive Bali nine bribe allegations

Date
April 27, 2015 - 4:45AM



The former lawyer of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran has outlined explosive allegations of corruption by the judges that sentenced the Bali nine duo to death, saying they asked for more than $130,000 to give them a prison term of less than 20 years.


But Bali-based attorney Muhammad Rifan says a deal fell through after the judges later told him they had been ordered by senior legal and government members in Jakarta to impose a death penalty.

The judges, it is alleged, then asked for an even greater sum for a lighter sentence, money Mr Rifan did not have.

The sensational claims by Mr Rifan that the initial trial of the pair was deeply corrupted were revealed by a joint investigation by Fairfax Media and the former host of SBS' Dateline program Mark Davis, a Gold Walkley-winning journalist.


It comes on the eve of the execution of the two Australians, who have been told they will die at midnight on Tuesday, or soon after.

Mr Rifan says he has gone public with details of the alleged corruption after waiting for the judicial commission, the Indonesian body that safeguards the probity of judges, to investigate the alleged requests for bribes.

The investigation was prompted after Mr Rifan made a surprise visit to Kerobokan prison on February 7 to meet with the condemned Australians, emerging to tell reporters there had been "interference" in the case.


"It's something that implicates us, it could discredit me. But for them I will take it," he said.

Until now, he has declined to elaborate on the damning, if cryptic, comments. But he says he is now going public because the matter is extremely urgent given the Bali nine pair will soon be shot dead by a firing squad.

In a recorded interview with Davis on Sunday, provided to Fairfax Media, Mr Rifan outlines how he first met with the judges to discuss the bribes and how the intervention from Jakarta, and his own miscalculation, led to the death sentence being applied to Chan and Sukumaran.

'We met many times with the judges'

His account provides a disturbing insight into the machinations of Indonesia's legal system, widely pilloried within the country as riven by corruption and wildly inconsistent rulings.

"We met many times with the judges," he said. "We were talking about how long the penalty would be. Even though this is prohibited between lawyers and a judge, this is the reality. It's normal."

As negotiations proceeded, Mr Rifan says the judges were prepared to offer a sentence of 20 years imprisonment,

"We could not give them what they wanted," he says. "We were asking down to 15 years…

"It was more than 1 billion rupiah (about $133,000 at the time) to get a verdict lower than 20 years – 15 or 16 or 17 years like that. So then we had a deal on that."

But he says the deal unravelled one or two weeks before the pair were due to be sentenced, when the order allegedly came from upon high came to hand Chan and Sukumaran the death penalty.

It is understood that the directive came from the attorney general's office and the supreme court.

Following the intervention, Mr Rifan said the judges "started asking for a lot more money".

"I just explained to them how much we had and they said the risk was now too big for them and that the [1 billion rupiah] was not enough."

At this point, Mr Rifan says he made a fatal miscalculation. He believed the judges were bluffing.

"I thought they were only joking. I thought they would return back to the 20 years if I didn't come up with more money."

But, on February 14, 2006, Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death.

One of the judges involved in the case, Wayan Yasa Abadi, denied in February there had been political interference or negotiations about bribes.

"I can assure you there was none," he told Fairfax Media. "We protected ourselves from everybody. It was purely our decision."

Another of the judges, Roro Setyawati, has said she had opposed the death penalty but was overruled by other judges on the panel.

'If they are dead, they cannot be brought back'

Mr Rifan accepts that his account of events should be properly tested by a thorough and impartial investigation by the judicial commission. In the meantime, he says, it was vital that the executions of the two Australian heroin smugglers be postponed.

"This is an extraordinary situation because it is about lives. … If they are dead they cannot be brought back again."

The meeting between himself and the judges and the alleged interference by Jakarta are both "prohibited" under Indonesian law.

"The judges are meant to be independent," he says.

Fairfax Media has verified that an account by Mr Rifan has been separately outlined in writing. Meanwhile, Chan and Sukumaran have provided affidavits to the judicial commission.

The commission allocated a file number to the case about two months ago, meaning it had formally authorised an investigation.

However, Fairfax Media understands the judicial commission still has not interviewed the judges who heard the matter in Bali's district court, or anyone else involved in the matter.

Mr Rifan says the inaction by the judicial commission is puzzling. He has made complaints about judicial irregularities before and "they were much more responsive".

"They came to Bali straight away. They do the interview. They asked for the evidence, many things. They were very quick. But why in this case do they do nothing?"

The judiciary under the spotlight

The handling of the legal cases of the Australians, as well as the other seven drug traffickers slated to be executed alongside them, has sparked criticism of irregularities and interference in the independence of the judiciary.

Attorney general HM Prasetyo has consistently said that appeals before the courts should – or will – be rejected even as they were still being considered.

Meanwhile, the country's supreme court and state administrative court rushed through verdicts – all adverse to the condemned drug felons – in unusually rapid time.

Indonesia's president Joko Widodo announced in December he would reject the clemency applications of 64 drug convicts on death row before he had examined their cases individually or the felons had exhausted their legal appeals. He said the action was needed to fix the country's "drugs emergency".

Mr Rifan says the judicial commission had rebuffed repeated requests to properly investigate the matter before Chan and Sukumaran are executed.

"They don't care that some people are about to be shot," he says. "Maybe next month or in two months they will make a decision that the judges made a mistake, that their decision was not independent, that the penalty was invalid from the beginning. …

"But if these boys have already died, they are shot, what is the point then?"

'They wanted $130,000 ... and then more': explosive Bali nine bribe allegations

^

In hind sight they should of payed the money.

After all 130 K is nothing compared to what they have made smuggling smack through Bali.

It was not there first time doing it.

Corrupt drug smugglers paying off the Judge to spare their lives.

Sounds perfectly acceptable to me.


Anyway, i'ts game over huh.

Sounds perfectly acceptable to me.

terry, you truly are a silly arse at times.

you seem to have no conception of the insidious and destructive nature of corruption.

The legal challenges have been exhausted, the pleas for mercy ignored. On Saturday, in line with the macabre bureaucracy, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were granted 72 hours’ notice, after which - barring an unlikely reprieve - they will be tied to a pole on the jungle island of Nusa Kambangan and shot dead.

Neither appeared in those first videos from Denpasar airport, of the young men stripped to their underwear, eyes wide with horror, as Indonesian police peeled sheets of tape and straps from their stomachs and thighs.

Chan was arrested later that day aboard a flight bound for Australia, carrying no drugs, just mobile phones. The police found Sukumaran in a Kuta beach hotel room with 350g of heroin and three accomplices. It was 17 April 2005, and the group – quickly dubbed the Bali Nine – had been under surveillance for a week, after a tip-off.


Australian drug smugglers see family as 72-hour execution clock ticks down
Read more
Sensational media reporting fuelled tough public judgments. Chan was the “godfather” of the operation. Sukumaran, a hulking “martial arts expert”, was the enforcer. What little sympathy the public could muster was saved for the drug couriers they had recruited, such as 19-year-old Scott Rush.

A wayward kid from Sydney, Rush had told his parents he was camping up the coast. But messages on his family’s answering machine indicated he had bought a ticket to Bali. His father, Lee, grew worried. “Scott never had a passport. He certainly didn’t have the finances to be able to participate in such a trip,” he later told the ABC.

Through a lawyer, Robert Myers, Rush contacted the Australian federal police. Myers warned that Scott could soon make a trip to Bali, that he feared the young man was being paid to smuggle drugs. Speaking to the ABC, Lee Rush swore the police had assured them: “Scott would be spoken to and asked not to board the flight.”

In court and in subsequent inquiries, police have denied any such assurance was made. “The AFP … had no lawful authority to stop Scott Rush,” Mike Phelan, then the AFP’s international network manager, has insisted.

The tip was passed to the Indonesian drug squad. Rush was among the first arrested in Denpasar airport. He later said an Australian officer was present at the scene, that he made a phone call, saying, “We’ve got ’em.”

Easily cast as villains
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The trials opened in October 2005. All but Chan and Sukumaran pleaded guilty. Evasive, unrepentant, absurdly insisting their innocence, the pair were easily cast as villains.

In truth, the “godfather” Chan was a 22-year-old still living with his parents in western Sydney, a drug user working a dead-end job. A reputed drug kingpin, he drove a 1991 Hyundai coupe.

Sukumaran, also living with his parents in Sydney, had turned 24 the day of his arrest. He had wanted to escape his job in a mailroom, maybe use his cut of the deal to buy a car, or start a business. “You see all these people in night clubs with nice BMWs, and nice Mercedes, and there’s always chicks there,” he reflected later. “And you think, fuck, how do you do this on a mailroom salary?”

In February 2006 the seven couriers were each sentenced to life in prison. The court found no evidence to back claims by some that they had been forced to carry the drugs after threats by Chan and Sukumaran to harm their families.

For the duo, who were found to have supplied cash and booked flights and hotel rooms, it was death by firing squad. Anti-drug demonstrators outside the court reportedly cheered at the verdict.

Myuran Sukumaran Andrew chan Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in a cell at Denpasar court in February 2006. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
Little outcry was heard in Australia. “No sympathy”, trumpeted the front page of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph the day of the sentence. “Their drug operation would have destroyed thousands of lives – now they’ll pay with theirs.”

Years of legal challenges followed. Renae Lawrence, the sole woman in the gang, had her sentence reduced to 20 years. Appeals by four couriers, including Rush, to the Indonesian supreme court returned a staggering outcome: their sentences were upgraded to death.

Though they would be scaled back to life within five years, the sentences revealed the strength of resentment in Indonesia towards drug crimes, particularly those committed by foreigners. Few were surprised, then, when two appeals to spare Chan and Sukumaran’s lives in 2006 foundered.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, a group of activists and lawyers fiercely opposed to the death penalty coalesced around the men’s case. In Kerobokan, Sukumaran picked up a paintbrush and Chan began to attend Christian services.

There were shoots of hope in Indonesia. The president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, had overseen only a handful of executions, including those of the Bali bombers in 2008, and campaigned hard against the 2012 beheading of an Indonesian maid in Saudi Arabia. From 2009 he instituted a virtual moratorium, carrying out no killings for four years.

By the time Chan and Sukumaran gave their first in-depth media interview, to SBS in 2010, they were noticeably changed men. Gone were the hard expressions, the denials. “More or less for me it was just a quick payday,” Chan admitted. What impact the 8.3kg of heroin might have on the users and their families had never crossed his mind.

He had become a committed Christian and, though he declined to speak effusively about his faith, he now spent much of his day in prayer or religious study, and led mass for other prisoners.

Andrew Chan Myuran Sukumaran Facebook Twitter Pinterest
The pair talk to lawyers after their appeal against the death penalty was rejected in 2010. Photograph: Made Nagi/EPA
Sukumaran had poured himself into running English and computer lessons in the prison, which he funded by selling his and other prisoners’ art. The reputed muscle of the operation was soft-spoken and had a wry sense of humour, designing souvenir T-shirts branded “Kingpin”, a wink at his portrayal in the press.

Remarkably, at a 2010 judicial review into their death sentences, the governor of Kerobokan prison, Bapak Siswanto, appeared, testifying to the men’s character and positive influence on other prisoners. “Instinctively my spirit says, can’t he be pardoned?” he told judges. “Can’t state officials show mercy?”

Yet again the challenge failed. Two years later, in May 2012, the volunteer legal team led by Julian McMahon took their last chance, appealing directly to Yudhoyono for clemency.

The papers lingered on the presidential desk along with several other appeals. Executing drug traffickers is hugely popular among Indonesians. Yudhoyono could quietly keep Chan, Sukumaran and some of the estimated 62 other drug offenders on death row alive, but no more.

‘No forgiveness’
On 9 July 2014, Joko Widodo, a wiry Javanese former furniture salesman, was elected Indonesia’s seventh president. Hopeful international observers dubbed him “Indonesia’s Obama”, the headbanging, cleanskin governor of Jakarta, whose ascension might signal a new chapter in the archipelago’s politics.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...a-gruesome-end

Originally Posted by terry57

Out of the Bali Nine only these two are being topped as they set the gig up.

Yeah nah...

The guy who set up this gig lives happily in Sydney, he will not be seeing any jailtime let alone a bullet.

At least three of 10 people on death row in Indonesia for drug smuggling have been given formal notice of their imminent execution.
Two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, and a Philippines woman, Mary Jane Veloso were notified by Indonesian officials on Saturday.
Under Indonesian law, convicts must be given 72 hours' notice of execution, but no formal date has yet been set.
The appeals process for a French national is still under way.
The group is being held on the prison island of Nusakambangan.
Appeals for clemency
"Indonesian authorities today [Saturday] advised Australian consular officials that the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will be scheduled imminently at Nusa Kambangan prison in central Java," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement.
She said she would continue to press for clemency. However, Indonesia's government has rejected all appeals so far.
Veloso's parents, two sons and sister travelled to the island on Saturday to see her.
Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were the leaders of the "Bali Nine" group arrested in 2005 while attempting to smuggle heroin to Australia.
A court ruled that they had organised a nine-member smuggling operation and they were sentenced to death in 2006.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who took office last year, has taken a tough stance on drug crime.
In January he authorised the executions of six people, including five foreigners, convicted of drug offences.

Bali Nine: Indonesia issues execution orders - BBC News

Originally Posted by taxexile

terry, you truly are a silly arse at times.

you seem to have no conception of the insidious and destructive nature of corruption.

Yes I do understand what you are saying and you are correct.

But given the choice of dying or paying 130K what do you recommend is the correct cause of action. ?

Given it was your neck on the line huh.

Originally Posted by Fondles

Originally Posted by terry57

Out of the Bali Nine only these two are being topped as they set the gig up.

Yeah nah...

The guy who set up this gig lives happily in Sydney, he will not be seeing any jailtime let alone a bullet.

That's correct but these two set up the gig in Bali, same same innit.

Originally Posted by PeeCoffee

What penalty would the prosecution impose for 5 gr possession in Tazmania - 10 AA classes and court costs ?

Apples and oranges. Tasmania isn't Indonesia. Indonesia has very well-publicized severe drug smuggling penalties - people ignore them at their own peril.