Government warned about hypocrisy over Bali bombers

LAWYERS representing Australians on death row in Indonesia have urged the Rudd Government to signal its in-principle opposition to the imminent execution of the Bali bombers, or risk being "objectively identified as hypocrites" across Asia.

Colin McDonald QC, who represents Bali Nine member Scott Rush, said the Rudd Government needed to speak with one voice in condemning capital punishment or it would be harder to save Australian lives in the future.

"In practical terms, it makes it so much harder to save the lives of Australian citizens when there is apparent political ambivalence about the carrying-out of the death penalty overseas," he said.

Kevin Rudd told Neil Mitchell yesterday on Melbourne Radio 3AW that his Government was "universally opposed to the death penalty", but would intervene only "in the case of Australian citizens".

Barrister Julian McMahon, who acted for Australian drug trafficker Van Nguyen, 25, who was hanged in Singapore in 2005, urged a more humane punishment of the bombers.

"It will dignify the memory of those who were murdered if we call for punishment which is both humane and in accordance with our legal obligations and stated policy," he said. "True justice is not vengeance. It is not an eye for an eye, but is firm and humane."

Mr McMahon said failure to remain consistent on capital punishment would expose the Government to attack in the region.

"Wherever we are not consistent, the Asian press accuses us of being hypocritical," he said. "They ask why should there be one rule for Australians and a different rule for non-Australians?"

The bombers, Amrozi, Ali Ghufron and Imam Samudra, face execution within days for their roles in the Bali bombings of 2002, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Security has been stepped up in and around the southern Java city of Cilacap, near the prison island of Nusakambangan, where the three will face the firing squad as early as tomorrow.

Deputy Attorney-General Abdul Hakim Ritonga said yesterday: "All preparations are ready. Security forces have been boosted."

However, lawyers for the bombers said authorities had not informed them of their clients' imminent execution, which they are obliged to do at least three days before the sentence is carried out.

The condemned men are hoping for one more visit by close family members, although Ghufron's Malaysia-based wife and six children, including youngest son Osama, made their final trip to the jail last week.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told Radio National yesterday the execution was a matter for the Indonesian authorities. "We certainly don't make representations on behalf of terrorists (and) we don't see that, in any way, as being contradictory," Mr Smith said.

Mr McDonald said opposition to the death penalty was long-standing Labor policy and had been correctly articulated by the party's then foreign affairs spokesman, Robert McClelland, last October when he spoke out against the execution of the Bali bombers.

"Labor believes that supporting executions, even by a nation state, gives justification to all kinds of fanatical lunatics to take the lives of others in pursuit of their own warped ideologies," Mr McClelland said. But his comments drew a sharp rebuke from the Prime Minister.

Mr McDonald claimed Australian leaders had tended to speak with a "forked tongue" on the issue of capital punishment, marking a "retreat from principle to political opportunism".

"When we retreat from our asserted universal opposition to the death penalty, we run the danger of being objectively identified as hypocrites," he said.

Mr McDonald and Mr McMahon, who represents two of the Bali Nine on death row, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, warned that the imminent executions would fulfil the Bali bombers' aspirations, give them hero status and turn them into martyrs.

"Why set the stage for them to become potential martyrs when they could die decades hence, forgotten lonely old men?" Mr McDonald said.

Source: The Australian