Lawyers for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran say they have new indications their last-ditch legal appeal is moving forward, despite reports that the Bali Nine pair will be transferred to the site of their execution this week.
Todung Mulya Lubis, who represents Chan and Sukumaran, lodged an appeal to the administrative court last week challenging the Indonesian president’s decision to issue a blanket denial of clemency for all drug offenders.
Speaking to reporters in Jakarta on Monday afternoon, Lubis said the legal team had been summoned to a meeting with the head of the administrative court next Tuesday, 24 February.
“This is prima facie evidence that the legal process is still ongoing,” said Lubis, holding up the letter as proof.
The legal team appealed to the Indonesian president to respect the legal process and is holding out hope their last-minute appeal could prevent the execution of the two Australians, convicted for their role in the 2005 heroin-smuggling plot.
“I hope this legal process will be respected by the attorney general and all parts of the government,” Lubis said. “So they cannot move them, not to mention execute them, while the legal process is still going on.”
Melbourne barrister Michael O’Connell, who has worked on the case of Chan and Sukumaran since 2007, endorsed Lubis’s comments that the legal process “be respected and be allowed to run its course. And that there be no execution, and indeed no movement of Myuran Sukumaran or Andrew Chan until the court has had an opportunity to determine that case.”
Officials in Bali said earlier on Monday that Chan and Sukumaran would be transferred this week to the prison island of Nusakambangan in Java, where the executions by firing squad are expected to take place.
Family members and the legal team have not yet been advised of any scheduled transfer.
“So far we have not been notified, the family have not been notified, and we don’t know for sure whether it is going to take place or not,” Lubis said.
He admitted that once Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 33, had been transferred to Nusakambangan it would be hard to reverse the process.
President Joko Widodo has insisted that no drug offender will be granted clemency – a position Chan and Sukumaran’s legal team argues is seriously flawed.
“Clemency appeals should be reviewed, examined by the president individually,” said Lubis, who referred to Chan and Sukumaran as a model of successful rehabilitation. “There is no way the president can have a blank cheque to reject all clemency petitions, it is a violation of basic human rights.”
Lubis said he was not in a position to comment on claims that judges in the trial of Chan and Sukumaran had offered lighter sentences in return for bribes, but urged the judicial commission to immediately investigate.
