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| Indonesian President Joko Widodo portrayed by Myuran Sukumaran. |
Lawyers for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran say new legal challenge is aimed at clarifying prisoners’ rights
Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran’s fight to be rescued from death row has moved to Indonesia’s constitutional court, a challenge their lawyers argue is more than a delaying tactic.
On Monday the Bali Nine pair lost a bid to challenge their clemency rejections in the state administrative court, which upheld its earlier decision that presidential decrees were outside its jurisdiction.
The Indonesian government is now waiting on the legal efforts of a few other prisoners before setting an execution date.
Chan’s and Sukumaran’s lawyers on Thursday sought a constitutional court review to make clear the president’s obligations on considering clemency. They also wish to challenge the barrier preventing foreign citizens from constitutional court appeals.
The Indonesian attorney general, HM Prasetyo, has dismissed the challenge as delaying tactics and says he will not recognise it.
The Indonesian lawyer for the death row pair, Inneke Kusuma, told reporters the effort was not aimed at delaying the executions, but at clarifying a prisoner’s rights.
She argued the president’s obligations when assessing a prisoner’s life were unclear, for example, the weight that should be given to rehabilitation.
“This judicial review won’t delay the executions but we will tell the government, ‘Please hold on until this process is done,’ because if the constitutional court accepts what we lodge, the documents, maybe there will be a new mechanism to consider their clemency,” she said.
The challenge was lodged on Thursday and could take several months.
Source: The Guardian, April 10, 2015
