Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran could remain on death row for weeks after Indonesia’s attorney general said that appeals for their fellow prisoners would have to be finalised before any executions took place.
The Indonesian authorities have said the execution of 10 inmates will take place at the same time, meaning that at the very least it will take weeks before all legal appeals are exhausted.
“Executions will be done when everything is clear, whether it be in March or in April,” said attorney general spokesman Tony Spontana on Thursday.
A judicial review lodged by Serge Altaoui, a Frenchman on death row with the two Australians, was this week adjourned until 25 March.
The legal wranglings deepened on Thursday when a final appeal at the administrative court in Jakarta lodged by lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran was adjourned until 19 March after the court refused to accept the authority of president Joko Widodo’s legal representation.
Lawyers for the Bali nine pair were appealing a decision made by the same court in February contesting the president’s blanket refusal to grant clemency to the drug traffickers.
But the panel of three judges hearing the appeal on Thursday adjourned the case saying they did not recognise the authority of the president’s legal representative from the state secretariat. The judge said the president’s legal representative did not have “surat kuasa” or letter of authority.
The judges said the government representative did not have the correct paperwork signed by the attorney general to grant him valid legal representative authority.
Lawyers acting for the Australian men declined to comment on the ruling.
Already transferred to the prison island off central Java, the site of their planned execution, Thursday’s ruling will give the Bali nine pair, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, at least another week of reprieve.
It also emerged that Julie Bishop, the Australian foreign minister, has offered that her government could pay the costs of keeping two drug traffickers in prison for life if Indonesia spares them from execution.
