Twelve Australians – including two grandmothers – are facing possible execution overseas, far more than previously known.
The imperiled dozen are in addition to three Australians already sentenced to death – Pham Trung Dung in Vietnam, and Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in Bali.
Sukumaran and Chan could be killed by an Indonesian firing squad within weeks, with a spokesman for Attorney-General H.M. Prasetyo saying a freshly-lodged judicial review will not stop their executions.
However, Fairfax has learned that 12 other Australians have also been detained for serious offences or charged with crimes that carry the death penalty and could soon join the grim wait for the executioner.
Until now, only two cases of Australians in the predicament were known.
They were Peter Gardiner, the dual Australia-New Zealand man caught with 30 kilograms of methamphetamine in China and Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, a 51-year-old grandmother, caught with 1.5 kg of the drug in Malaysia.
Fairfax understands that a 71-year-old grandmother is among the other 10 Australians facing execution.
The Department of Foreign Affairs declined to provide any details on the other cases but it is understood the bulk of them, if not all, involve drug trafficking in Asia.
"These figures are subject to revision and represent the best of our knowledge. As a matter of policy we do not disclose the names or locations of these consular clients," a DFAT spokesman said.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, Tom Allard, January 31, 2015
