Thread: Bali Executions

Originally Posted by terry57

^

Urm OK,

Do you have anything of value to add or is that it. ?

I thought I read somewhere a while back that Australia tipped off Indonesia to Bali 9. Is that true? I don't see any mention of it in this thread.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

I thought I read somewhere a while back that Australia tipped off Indonesia to Bali 9. Is that true? I don't see any mention of it in this thread.

Plenty on Google :

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

Bali Nine: AFP faces bitter recriminations over its involvement in arrests - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Why did the AFP hand over the Bali Nine? | The New Daily

Just in case someone cannot read the first link, here it is copied and pasted :

WHEN Lee Rush learned in April 2005 that his son Scott was off to Bali, he felt sick. Scott had no money, no passport - as far as his father knew - and a history of drug use. Rush phoned an old lawyer friend, Robert Myers, who voiced his worst fears: that Scott might be travelling as a paid courier to carry drugs.
The two men agreed the 19-year-old had to be stopped. Myers rang a contact in the Australian Federal Police and asked him to have Scott intercepted before he left the country, on suspicion of illegal activity. By his account, he was assured this would happen.

But the AFP took a different course. Instead, as the young Queenslander was preparing to fly out of Australia, the AFP tipped off their counterparts in the Indonesian National Police. Nine days later Rush was arrested with three other mules at Bali's Denpasar airport as they were about to return home with nearly 8kg of heroin strapped to their bodies. In September 2006 an Indonesian court sentenced Rush to death.

Yesterday, Scott Rush, now aged 24, appeared in court in Denpasar to appeal against the death sentence, which was handed down in a shock decision after prosecutors appealed against his original sentence of life in prison.
Rush's hopes for avoiding the death penalty rely heavily on letters from the AFP saying he was only a courier, not an organiser. But the AFP's belated intervention in Rush's favour may be too late. His supporters ask, if Scott Rush is sent to the firing squad, will the AFP, to quote Myers, have "his blood on their hands?"

Rush's journey from Brisbane to Bali's Kerobokan prison began in his teens when he started using cannabis and then amphetamines, ecstasy and finally heroin. He was expelled from Brisbane's Saint Laurence College in Year 10 for drug use, and pleaded guilty in the Inala Magistrates Court in 2004 to drug possession, drink-driving, theft and fraud.
Around this time, at a karaoke bar in Brisbane, Rush met a young Vietnamese-Australian, Thanh Nguyen, three years his senior. In early 2005 Nguyen offered Rush and an old school friend, Michael Czugaj, also 19, a free holiday in Bali, Czugaj later testified.
Unknown to Rush, Nguyen and his cohorts were already under investigation by the AFP. A few months earlier some of the group had travelled to Bali to organise an importation of heroin but, according to AFP intelligence, "the importation was cancelled because there was not enough money to buy the stuff." Nguyen recruited Rush for a second attempt.
Lee Rush learned of his son's trip when a travel agent phoned the family home about his flight booking on April 7, 2005, the day before Scott was due to fly out.

"This phone call made us feel absolutely sick in the stomach," Lee Rush told ABC's Australian Story in 2006. "It was a gut feeling more than anything, possibly there was some link with drugs."
His barrister friend, Myers, called a Queensland policeman he knew, Damon Patching, who was on secondment to the AFP, and asked if Rush could be stopped at the airport, on the grounds that he had prior convictions, was on bail at the time, and suspected of "being up to no good". Myers later told the Federal Court that Patching assured him it would be taken care of. But Patching testified: "My conclusion at this stage was that there was no reason for Scott Rush to be detained and that he should be allowed to leave without being disturbed. My view was that despite the concerns of Lee Rush, Scott Rush was an adult and there was no basis for detaining [him]."

On April 8, the same day Rush flew out of Australia, the AFP sent a letter to the Indonesian National Police, headed "Subject: Heroin couriers from Bali to Australia."
The letter, since tendered in evidence, set out in great detail what the AFP knew about the looming heroin importation.
Four couriers recruited by Nguyen and the accused organiser, Andrew Chan, had already left for Bali. Another three including Rush were due to leave Australia that day. They would return a week later with heroin in packs strapped to their legs and back. They had been instructed by the organisers to wear oversized clothes for concealment, avoid carrying metal so as not to set off airport detectors, and to bring back wooden carvings to declare to quarantine in order to bypass Customs. They had also been instructed not to smoke cigarettes for two weeks prior to travel as they would be unable to smoke on the return flight and the organisers didn't want them looking nervous.

The AFP letter requested the INP to attempt to keep the group under surveillance, identify the source of the drugs, and obtain as much evidence and intelligence as possible to help the AFP nail the organisers in Australia, other than Chan. The most crucial paragraph of the AFP letter advised the INP: "should they suspect that Chan and/or the couriers are in possession of drugs at the time of their departure, that they take what action they deem appropriate."

Four days later, on April 12, 2005, a second letter was sent by the AFP to their Indonesian counterparts, providing the dates, times and flight details of the group's return to Australia. Chan and four of the couriers were due to fly back to Australia on April 14, while Rush, Nguyen and Czugaj were due to fly two days later, on Saturday the 16th.
This letter, from the AFP's senior liaison officer in Bali, Paul Hunniford, advised: "If arrests are made [in Indonesia] on 14 April, it is likely that Nguyen, Czugaj and Rush will become suspicious of the arrest and decide not to attempt to board the Saturday flight with narcotics. I therefore request that you consider searching Nguyen, Czugaj and Rush soon after the first group are intercepted."
The AFP's letters sealed the fate of the Australians who became known as the Bali Nine.
"The federal police knew at the time that it was inevitable the nine of them could face the death penalty and that's the abhorrent thing about it," Myers says.

"They would have known there was a real risk that all nine of them would die, and they were prepared to sacrifice them."
He believes the AFP was trying to curry favour with the Indonesians to win their support on counter-terrorism. "And I think they felt that if they gave them nine lives the Indonesians couldn't resist their pleas for co-operation on terrorism."
As per the AFP's instructions, the Indonesian police moved in as the first group of couriers waited at Denpasar airport for their return flight to Australia. Rush, Michael Czugaj, Renae Lawrence and Martin Stephens were caught at the airport with 8kg of heroin strapped to their bodies. Four others, Nguyen, Myuran Sukumaran, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman, were arrested at a Kuta hotel. The alleged organiser, Chan, was detained without drugs after boarding a plane for Sydney.
The accused ringleaders of the group, Chan and Sukumaran, were sentenced to death in February 2006. Norman, Stephens, Czugaj, Chan and Nguyen are serving life terms while Lawrence is serving twenty years.
Rush's life term was unexpectedly replaced with a death sentence after prosecutors appealed in September 2006.
Since the Bali Nine's capture, the AFP has been widely criticised for tipping off the INP and authorising their arrest in Indonesia, rather than allowing them to return to Australia where they might have led police to the leaders of the drug ring and then faced punishment under Australian law. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has described the AFP's conduct as "outrageous", saying "If these Australians are put before a firing squad, it will be because the AFP helped to put them there."
In 2006, the Rush family took the AFP to the Federal Court, alleging police had acted negligently and without lawful authority by disclosing information to the Indonesians that led to Australian citizens facing the death penalty.

The Mutual Assistance Treaty that sets out the terms of police co-operation between Australia and Indonesia allows for assistance to be refused in cases where the death penalty may apply. The AFP's own Death Penalty Charge Guide provides that "assistance may be refused in the absence of an assurance from the requesting country that the death penalty would not be imposed". However, this applies only to cases in which charges are pending, whereas in the case of the Bali Nine, no charges had yet been laid.

As a result, Justice Paul Finn ruled that the federal police's conduct "fell squarely within the lawful functions of the AFP. Scott Rush and his colleagues were the authors of their own harm," the judge ruled.
However, Finn urged the federal government and the AFP to review the procedures followed when providing information to foreign police forces that could expose an Australian citizen to the death penalty.
On instructions from the attorney-general, the AFP guidelines on co-operation were overhauled in December last year. "It's been fixed up so the same thing can't happen again," says Myers. "I think the new guidelines are about right and had they been in place we wouldn't have three Australian citizens on death row."

Aside from the AFP's role, there are many unanswered questions about the Indonesian police's handling of their end of the Bali Nine investigation, including why they failed to identify the source of the narcotics in Indonesia, as requested by the AFP. A Thai prostitute whom Chan is said to have used as a contact has reportedly disappeared, while a major heroin trafficker suspected of supplying the drugs was shot dead in a police raid in Jakarta, according to press reports. One theory - which remains unproven - is that corrupt Indonesian police may have had a hand in the deal.
In a hearing in Denpasar yesterday, Scott Rush's lawyers argued that the imposition of the death penalty in his case is manifestly unjust. If this argument fails, his last chance to escape the firing squad will be an appeal to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has never granted clemency in a drug case.
Rush's best hope lies in a letter written by former AFP commissioner Mick Keelty before his retirement last year, which describes Rush as merely a courier. "There is no indication that Scott was an organiser or aware of the scale of the organisation behind the volume of drug importations," the letter says.
Keelty could not be reached for comment, and Scott Rush's parents, Lee and Christine, said they would make no statement while their son's appeal is before the court.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

I thought I read somewhere a while back that Australia tipped off Indonesia to Bali 9. Is that true? I don't see any mention of it in this thread.

Plenty on Google :

Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

Bali Nine: AFP faces bitter recriminations over its involvement in arrests - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Why did the AFP hand over the Bali Nine? | The New Daily

That's got to be a bitter pill to swallow for the parents and families back in Australia. Sounds like somebody decided to make an example of some folks.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Originally Posted by terry57

^

Urm OK,

Do you have anything of value to add or is that it. ?

I thought I read somewhere a while back that Australia tipped off Indonesia to Bali 9. Is that true? I don't see any mention of it in this thread.

If my memory serves me correctly, it was Scott Rush's father who tipped of the Australian Federal Police, for some reason he thought his son was up to no good and contacting them might stop Scott getting into trouble, this was before the Bali 9 left Australia. The AFP didnt respond but let the 9 continue on their merry way, then the Bali cops took over. No doubt the 9 would've been under constant servalance while in Bali. If that was the case, do I consider the AFP did the wrong thing,, no I dont.

^
Fortunately the AFP have accepted ithey did the wrong thing and agree it will never be allowed to happen again.

Perhaps you could explain to the AFP how they got it right.

Bali Nine executions: how the deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will unfold

43 MINUTES AGO APRIL 28, 2015 9:17PM


JUST before midnight (3am AEST), the prisoners — including Bali Nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran — will be led from their isolation cells in Besi prison — one of Nuskambangan’s seven prisons — down to a police station on the water’s edge.

Behind the prison is a new purpose-built firing range which will be floodlit for the nine to be executed.

Waiting for each condemned person will be their own 12-man firing squad, raised out of Brimob, the paramilitary police unit. Their SSI automatic rifles will be set to single shot.
Convention dictates that three of the shooters in each squad will be issued a live round and the others blanks (though in the January executions at this same site, a mortician who attended to several of the bodies insisted they had been shot with only one bullet).

They will be dressed in simple, white clothing and a target will be pinned over their hearts. The eight men, and the one woman, will be offered a hood, if they wish.
In previous executions, people were strapped to a post. But in the January executions, a new method was devised — of being strapped to a plank.
The victim can choose to sit, kneel or stand.

At the command, after midnight, a volley of shots will ring out, which will be audible over the river in the nearby city of Cilacap.

Authorities have said they want all the victims executed at the one time, because to do them in batches on the same night world cause “stress” for those waiting.
But it is not clear whether the firing range is large enough to hold 110 shooters, plus commanders, witnesses and medical staff.

It is possible some could be taken to the old firing range, on top of the island above the prisons.

A doctor will inspect the bodies. If a person is deemed to be still alive, the firing squad commander will take an “amnesty shot”, meaning he will put a bullet from his pistol into the head at close range.



The doctor will stitch shut the heart wounds as they lay dead on the field. The bodies will then be taken to a mortuary near the range, cleaned of blood and treated according to their respective religion.

Cheap coffins will be at the ready. The bodies will be carried off the island and for those countries that wish to repatriate their dead, they will need to be transferred into a sturdier casket and taken to a mainland morgue for cooling and then transportation.

The Abbott Government will pay the costs of the repatriation if the family cannot afford it.

Bali Nine executions: how the deaths of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will unfold

Barbaric - hard to believe this is happening in 2015

Originally Posted by Iceman123

Barbaric - hard to believe this is happening in 2015

Not really. The Saudis just chopped the heads off some murderers and drug smugglers in the last few weeks.

China, Malaysia and the US (and others) execute folks all the time.

There are currently 88 other Filipinos on death row, most in China and Malaysia, about half for murder and half for drug smuggling.

^ No politicians Dave? I can think of a few that need topping!

^^

And I suppose we can add to that it's pretty barbaric when young people get hooked on the filth the drug smugglers peddle.

Many die in the gutter with a needle in their arm or succumb to AIDS related diseases , untold families world wide suffer because of Drug peddlers and smugglers pushing smack.

The damage to the community is huge because of the drug smugglers and the Pain their filth causes.

Plenty more but you get the idea huh.

Suppose these lot get it over and done with quickly so not barbaric at all.

Yeah Terry,you are right once this round of executions are over that will be the drug problems solved.

What worldwide problems can you rectify next.

Originally Posted by Iceman123

Barbaric - hard to believe this is happening in 2015

Yes, I agree but once again these people knew the risks, accepted those conditions and through pure greed now must pay the price.

A commercial trade off that went bad or more directly according to the terms and conditions when they entered into the agreement.

Get caught.......................you die!

^^

You need to stop attacking me and keep to the subject matter.

Take it down to the Dog house if you want to get into it.

Thanks .

Ta .

Its interesting the way that this has descended into a "lets kill everyone" thread.

Topping politicians who make the law.
Topping people who break the law.
Topping people.
Topping.

Is that really the answer?

How many dead in Iraq? Syria? Ghan?
Sorry, but this just doesn't meet my beacon of care.

^ ^

Unusual for you Nooners to pen such blatant fuking rubbish in News.

Whatever.

And I suppose we can add to that it's pretty barbaric when young people get hooked on the filth the drug smugglers peddle.

Many die in the gutter with a needle in their arm or succumb to AIDS related diseases , untold families world wide suffer because of Drug peddlers and smugglers pushing smack.

The damage to the community is huge because of the drug smugglers and the Pain their filth causes.

Plenty more but you get the idea huh.

Suppose these lot get it over and done with quickly so not barbaric at all.

indeed terry, lets not get caught up in all the weeping emotion and sympathy for the 2 guilty australians, who for some people are seen as victims. they were the ringleaders of their operation and knew full well the consequences should they be caught.

but do spare a thought for some of the others who will be executed tonight, notably the filipino girl and the mentally ill brazilian man who by all accounts are as good as innocent and have been stitched up like kippers merely to make a point by the execrable indonesian police and justice system.

Terry I think we can sum up the total of your 42 posts on this thread by simply stating you are pro death penalty for drug dealers.

Ok we got it now stfu you obviously have nothing more to add.

How many members here can claim that they make the laws, control the laws, in fact I know we are all part of a big machine we have no control over?

Accept it with disdian and disgust and survive...............otherwise the big wheel will run over you!

Originally Posted by taxexile

But do spare a thought for some of the others who will be executed tonight, notably the filipino girl and the mentally ill Brazilian man who by all accounts are as good as innocent and have been stitched up like kippers merely to make a point by the execrable Indonesian police and justice system.

I purposely have not entered into any discussion regards any of the others simply because I have not followed their cases.

What you say may be true, I simply do not know so I do not go there.

What I do know is why the Two Australians will die in 2 hours and fifty minutes.

The facts are crystal clear on why they are now where they are.

Originally Posted by terry57

What I do know is why the Two Australians will die in 2 hours and fifty minutes.

The facts are crystal clear on why they are now where they are.

And you think that its right that they should die?

^

Do you think its right that you come in at the arse end of the thread and start posting up shit. ?

Read the fucker from the get go and then come back huh.

Do you think it is right that around a million Iraqi's died? And, for what? Lets get our priorities right.

Originally Posted by sabang

Do you think it is right that around a million Iraqi's died?

Bush?