Bali Nine members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will be among the next group of death row prisoners in Indonesia to be executed, the country’s attorney general has said.
Family members of both men visited Kerobokan prison on Monday, as the news broke. They did not speak to media.
On Friday, the lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran filed a last-ditch application for a judicial review.
The attorney general, Muhammad Prasetyo, made the announcement on Monday afternoon that the two Australians would be among the next group of prisoners executed. The timing was yet to be determined, he said.
Prasetyo said various things had to be considered before setting a date for the next round of executions, including the weather.
“We’re just waiting for the right time,” he said. “Their judicial aspects have been finished and certainly we are now in the stage of preparation for their death penalty execution.”
Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death for their part in a heroin smuggling attempt in 2005.
Indonesia executed six people earlier this month. Brazil and the Netherlands withdrew their ambassadors in response to the deaths of their countrymen.
The final avenue of appeal, known as a PK, was successfully filed on Friday morning on behalf of Chan and Sukumaran, amid legal disagreements between Indonesia’s two highest courts over whether prisoners were allowed more than one PK. This was the second for both men. The court is expected to make a decision as early as Monday or Tuesday, however a spokesman for Prasetyo told ABC the PK would not stop the executions.
The pair’s application for a second judicial review included handwritten pleas from the men, and accounts of their rehabilitation behind bars at Bali’s Kerobokan jail.
Prasetyo said that didn’t constitute new evidence. “From what I’ve heard, the new evidence, or what’s being called new evidence, submitted, is not actually new,” he told reporters.
“It’s about current developments. The meaning of new evidence is evidence from before the sentencing, which would make the sentence different. What was submitted was something that happened after the sentencing.”
As far as the attorney general is concerned, Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 33, exhausted their avenues for appeal when president Joko Widodo refused them clemency.
But he promised not to interfere with the court process.
“We hope the courts will see with clear vision how dangerous narcotics are to our nation,” he said. “I will not influence that.”
Nyoman Sudiantara, Chan’s former lawyer, told Guardian Australia on Monday he believed political differences between Indonesia and Australia had likely played some part in the decisions so far – including president Joko Widodo’s refusal to grant clemency.
Australian politicians, including the prime minister and foreign minister, are believed to have made back-channel appeals to the Indonesian government but to no avail.
Sudiantara said the filing of a second PK was largely unprecedented and had caused confusion.
