Indonesia scolds Australia over offer to pay for Bali Nine pair's life in prison
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Version 0 of 1. Indonesia has rebuked Australia for telling the media it had offered to pay the cost of two drug traffickers’ life imprisonment if they were spared from the death penalty. Details of Australian offers to spare Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, including correspondence between the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, and her Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi, were published on Thursday. The men were sentenced to death for their roles in the so-called Bali Nine heroin smuggling plot in 2005. Bishop’s earlier offer of a prisoner exchange deal was rejected and she is now awaiting a response on an offer to cover the cost of the life imprisonment of Chan and Sukumaran. Asked about the offer on Thursday, an Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman, Arrmanatha Nasir, said the matter was not open for negotiation. “I want to stress that it is not a matter of negotiation as has been said by the president and the foreign minister,” he told reporters in Jakarta. “This is a matter of law enforcement.” He was also keen to keep diplomatic correspondence on the subject private. “Official communication between governments, especially between foreign ministers or between two heads of state, as diplomacy or relationship between two countries, ethically, is something secret in nature,” he said. “That’s why Indonesia would never reveal the content of a letter or communication between two ministers or two heads of state. “We regret when friendly countries do their diplomacy through the media.” Chan and Sukumaran remain on Nusa Kambangan, where Indonesia intends to execute them for their heroin trafficking attempt. There is no date set for the firing squad; on Thursday morning the attorney general’s spokesman, Tony Spontana, confirmed plans to wait until all 10 prisoners’ legal appeals were exhausted, and execute them all simultaneously. “That’s why we gathered them in one place, Nusa Kambangan, and up to today there’s no changes to the plan,” he told reporters in Jakarta. One of the prisoners, a Frenchman, Serge Areski Atlaoui, has been taken off the central Java island for an appeal on 25 March, meaning the executions are potentially delayed until at least then. Asked specifically if the executions would wait for that case, Spontana said: “We’ll see if there’s a development, whether to wait or not.” Chan and Sukumaran’s latest appeal for mercy was adjourned for one week in the administrative court on Thursday. Bishop has said she will continue to put proposals to the Indonesian government, even if a date is set for the executions. |