Bali Nine Scott Rush makes final appeal against death penalty

Bali Nine Scott Rush

Bali Nine drug smuggler Scott Rush has appeared in a Denpasar court at the start of his final appeal against his death sentence.

Rush told the court he has nightmares about facing the firing squad and how long it will take him to die.

He apologised to the court and to his family for the unnecessary suffering he has caused.

Rush also said he wants to become an ambassador against drugs and hopes he will be given a chance to show that he has changed his ways.

"I want to show that I am a living example of how drugs destroy lives and cause family distress," he said.

His appeal has been bolstered by letters from the Australian Federal Police, stating Rush played only a minor role in the Bali Nine drug smuggling ring.

His previous appeal against a life sentence was answered with the death penalty, but this time his lawyers say their case is much stronger.

It is Rush's last chance to have a court cancel his death sentence.

The Queenslander was one of four Australians among the group arrested at Bali's Denpasar Airport in 2005. He was convicted of smuggling about a kilogram of heroin.

Three of the Bali Nine are on death row.

Source: ABC News, August 26, 2010

'I am a criminal, not a celebrity': Scott Rush

SCOTT Rush was almost mobbed by the media throng amid the flash of cameras as he arrived at Denpasar District Court yesterday.

Appearing pale and unwell, the 24-year-old Bali Nine convicted drug smuggler was helped to the court holding cell by guards, his Australian lawyer, Robert Welfare, and the Australian consul-general to Bali, Lex Bartlem.

Though Rush remarked later in his statement to the packed court, "I accept I am a criminal, not a celebrity", the high stakes of his final appeal against the death penalty have conferred an unwelcome high profile on the young Brisbanite.

Wearing long black pants, a white shirt, sunglasses and a wooden cross around his neck, he shunned the media, saying only: "I am not here to answer any questions . . . if you could kindly leave us a bit of space now."

Rush told the court: "I have brought much shame on myself and my family." He broke down in tears, fixing his eyes on parents Lee and Christine Rush, sitting in the front row of the courtroom's public gallery.

The couple appeared calm and collected for most of the nearly three-hour hearing, but the emotional strain took its toll after their son read out his statement. Mr Rush was clearly overcome with grief.

Rush was arrested in 2005 at Denpasar airport with heroin strapped to his body.

Lee Rush had unsuccessfully tried to convince the Australian Federal Police to stop his son before he left for Bali.

Rush is the only courier in the Bali Nine gang to have received the death penalty.

If Rush's final appeal fails, his only option is to seek clemency from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has shown little mercy to those convicted of narcotics crimes since he took office in 2004.

Source: The Australian, August 26, 2010

My life is in your hands, drug mule Scott Rush tells Indonesian judges

"MY life is in your hands, so please excuse me if I speak simply and with humility -- there is only time now to speak the truth."

Scott Rush in Depasar Courtroom

This is what Scott Rush told the judges who will play a large part in deciding, finally, whether he faces an Indonesian firing squad.

"This is my last opportunity to speak -- I can only offer words, though, words between life and words between possible death."

Five and a half years after he arrived in Bali, a young tearaway clutching his first passport on an appointment with disaster, Rush argued for his life yesterday in a Denpasar courtroom with the strained intensity of a man who knows that now only words might save him.

Pale, with dark-rimmed eyes, Rush was brought into the courthouse from Kerobokan Prison yesterday morning, seeming shaken and unwell.

A wooden crucifix he had worn around his neck in the prison van was tucked into his shirt pocket for the hearing.

"I pray each night, quietly and privately in my cell," he read, from a statement penned in blue into a large notebook. He said it was written on August 17, Indonesia's Independence Day.

"I pray that I may be given a chance to show my remorse and to give back to the community in a practical way," he told yesterday's hearing, watched by his parents, Lee and Christine Rush, and a packed courthouse.

"I would like to be an ambassador against drugs . . . to show (young people) that I am the living example of how drugs can destroy lives and do cause family and friends so much unhappiness, pain and distress."

Rush was 19 in April 2005 and on his first trip abroad when he was arrested in the Customs area of Bali's international airport with 1.3kg of heroin strapped to his body.

He and the other Bali Nine mules never stood a chance of boarding that flight home; the conspiracy to smuggle 8kg of narcotics into Australia had been under surveillance by the Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian police every step of their journey to infamy.

Sentenced by the Bali District Court to life imprisonment, the second-youngest of the Bali Nine sought to have his sentence shortened by the High Court. He lost.

Then Rush's lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court of Indonesia where, in 2008, he lost in the worst possible way -- the highest court in the land imposed a death sentence.

He now has one realistic chance left to avoid the execution of his penalty -- the judicial review of his sentence, which began yesterday in Denpasar District Court, heard by a panel of three judges and ultimately to be decided again by a closed hearing of the Supreme Court.

If that fails, the only one of the seven Bali Nine couriers to be sentenced to death faces the same fate as the group's principals, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Chan, 25, and Sukumaran, 29, are now also waiting for judicial reviews of their sentences.

Unlike Rush, they had not admitted their guilt until earlier this month, when filing their applications for reviews.

There is one other, slim, hope of salvation: an appeal for clemency to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. But in almost six years in office the President has never granted clemency to a drug criminal.

"I often wake up having nightmares," Rush told yesterday's hearing. "I often think about the firing squad and how long it would take me to die."

Rush's lawyers are arguing his death sentence is manifestly unjust, given the prison terms meted out to the other Bali Nine couriers.

They have statements from retired Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty and Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan, who was in charge of the Australian end of the Bali Nine operation, that the AFP considered him nothing more than a courier and knew nothing of the conspiracy.

Yesterday, over the objections of the prosecutors, Rush's team was given permission to call two Australian witnesses -- who seem to be Mr Keelty and Mr Phelan, though no names were given to the court -- at the next hearing.

"We don't mention their names yet," lawyer Robert Khuana said after yesterday's hearing. "It is better to wait until September 16.

"But, as I just mentioned, one of them is an international criminal expert."

Earlier yesterday Rush's chief advocate, Frans Winarta, told the review panel that from the time the AFP had informed Indonesian police of Rush's involvement, they had regarded him as a courier and not as being involved in organising the heroin-smuggling operation.

But this evidence had never been made available to Rush's original trial or to the High Court or Supreme Court, Mr Winarta said.

Source: The Australian, August 26, 2010