Skip to main content

Bali Nine: Double Standards On Death Row

Mick Keelty rightly made an effort to get Scott Rush off death row in Indonesia - after the AFP had put him there. Why aren't the other Australians facing the death penalty getting the same support?

Australian drug-smuggler Andrew Chan has lost his final appeal against a death sentence for his role in attempting to smuggle more than 8kg of heroin out of Indonesia. He will now almost certainly be killed by an Indonesian firing squad — unless he receives an unlikely last-minute pardon from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The decision to kill Chan was reportedly made by Indonesia’s Supreme Court more than a month ago, but it has only now been made public — two days after Abu Bakar Bashir was handed a 15-year sentence for being the motivating force behind the Bali bombings, which violently killed 88 Australians. Chan’s fellow death-row inmate Myuran Sukumaran’s appeal is still pending.

The news that an Australian will be killed by the Indonesian state was greeted here with barely a ripple over the weekend — while the media ran interviews with his stunned family members and Chan’s lawyers, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd made some soft and belated statements about doing all they could to help.

"The Australian government is opposed to the death penalty and we will be supporting Andrew Chan’s appeal for clemency," the Prime Minister told media. "I will be happy to do whatever is necessary … We will be working with Andrew Chan and his family and his legal representatives to make sure we have the strongest possible case."

But she refused to condemn the sentence, adding: "I don’t want to get into commentary about the judicial system of other countries because its not appropriate."

Similarly soft statements were made by John Howard when another Australian, Van Nguyen, was facing the gallows in Singapore. Nguyen, a 25-year-old, was sentenced to be hanged by the State of Singapore for trafficking 396 grams of heroin in 2003. "You are sentenced to be hung from the neck until you are dead," he was told in a bureaucratic hearing that lasted minutes, as New Matilda reported.

Nguyen was killed on 2 December 2005, after a series of ineffectual interventions by the Howard government. In the last days of his life, then foreign minister Alexander Downer told media that Nguyen would need a miracle to save him now.

Chan is one of what the media have been calling the "ringleaders" of the Bali 9 — the implication being that he and Sukumaran therefore deserve a harsher sentence than their drug-carrying cohorts.

One of Chan’s "mules", Scott Rush, was also facing the death sentence but had his appeal upheld in May after former AFP chief Mick Keelty testified at his final hearing that Rush was, essentially, not as bad as his fellow death-row smugglers, and therefore deserved to have his death sentence commuted. The natural conclusion to this — and to the fact that Keelty chose not to appear at the appeal hearings for the other Australians facing death at the hands of an Indonesian firing squad — is that unlike Rush, Chan and Sukumaran deserve to die.

Keelty told the Denpasar District Court in September last year that Rush’s involvement in the smuggling attempt was minimal.

"[Rush’s] information was limited…not only was it his first trip to Indonesia but his first trip out of Australia," Keelty told the court. "So he had very little knowledge and very little role in the enterprise. He was a very young person. His role was a very minimal role. Scott Rush was not an organiser."

Keelty knows this because it was the AFP that tipped off its Indonesian counterparts about the Bali Nine’s activities in April 2005.

It was Scott Rush’s father who raised the alarm when he realised his then 19-year-old son, who had no money and a history of drug abuse, was planning a last-minute trip to Bali. Lee Rush called a lawyer friend who in turn called a contact within the AFP — 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 as Sally Neighbour reported for The Australian in an excellent feature called ‘How the AFP trapped the Bali Nine’, 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 2006, the Rush family took the AFP to court, claiming they had acted "negligently and without lawful authority by disclosing information to the Indonesians that led to Australian citizens facing the death penalty".

But a loophole in the AFP’s own Death Penalty Charge Guide — which outlines that "assistance may be refused in the absence of an assurance from the requesting country that the death penalty would not be imposed" — meant the policy only applied to cases in which charges are pending. In the Bali Nine case no charges had yet been laid.

As Neighbour writes:

"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’. 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 2009.

After Van Nguyen was hanged by Singapore, Alexander Downer lashed out at claims his government did not do enough to save Nguyen’s life. But the truth is, they didn’t.

As former diplomat Bruce Haigh wrote in New Matilda at the time:

"To get a remission of the death sentence would have required eyeball to eyeball negotiations (and perhaps threats) to the Singapore Government. An informal discussion between the Australian and Singaporean Prime Ministers at the recent CHOGM in Malta was not in that category, and I would venture to suggest was a pro forma exchange designed as a sop to Australian public opinion."

John Howard said Nguyen’s killing should act as a warning to young people to stay away from drugs.

Kevin Rudd told media over the weekend that he would like to be remembered as one of Australia’s "better foreign ministers". He could start by getting 2 Australian citizens off death row.

Source: newmatilda.com, June 23, 2011
_________________________
Use the tags below or the search engine at the top of this page to find updates, older or related articles on this Website.

Comments

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.  The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

Arizona | The cruelty of isolation: There’s nothing ‘humane’ about how we treat the condemned

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones. 

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.

Louisiana | Lawyers of Jessie Hoffman speak about their final moments before execution

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.