Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

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Anchor Moy
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Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by Anchor Moy »

I thought he was known as "Torture'em Tony" ? Has he become a bleeding heart liberal? :stir:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/f ... -nine-pair
Tension has been building between Jakarta and Canberra over the fate of the two prisoners and on Friday the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, was again accused in Indonesia of making threats in his bid to save the pair.

Abbott said this week that Indonesia should remember the significant financial aid Australia provided in the aftermath of the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 Indonesians.

According to Fairfax, Bishop assured Kalla that Abbott’s comments were meant only to emphasise the history of friendship between their two countries.

Abbott himself had also denied the comment was threatening, but Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, on Friday suggested Jakarta felt otherwise.

“We will not respond to an emotional statement, which was a threat in nature,” she said, adding she did not think Indonesia owed Australia anything for their tsunami aid.

Marsudi added that Indonesia had been helping Australia by stopping the Bali Nine from bringing drugs into the country.

“So, the convicts persons would have bought the goods [drugs] into Australia. So actually in fact we saved those goods, stopped the goods so they were not carried out [of the country].”

Widodo has vowed to refuse clemency to narcotics dealers while Indonesia is facing a “drug emergency”.

Some analysts speculate he is taking a tough stance on the issue to appear decisive to his critics early in his presidency.
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by phuketrichard »

good;
they did the crime and according to info they were the masterminds

they knew the risks and set up the others

Fuck em &
hang em high
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. HST
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frank lee bent
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by frank lee bent »

I bet the indos were tipped by the oz cops on this.
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by Soi Dog »

phuketrichard wrote:good;
they did the crime and according to info they were the masterminds

they knew the risks and set up the others

Fuck em &
hang em high
That's quite a harsh stance from the biggest proponent of illegal drug use on either forum. Maybe one day your luck will run out and you will find yourself in a Thai prison for possession. Actually I agree with your statement 100%...but it seems a bit bizarre coming from you.
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by vladimir »

Apparently Indonesians are taking up a collection to pay back the aid and labelling Abbott ' Shylock'.

He really does have a knack for riling people.
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by wasabi »

frank lee bent wrote:I bet the indos were tipped by the oz cops on this.
That certainly was the case! Sorry - I know it is long!
How the AFP trapped the Bali Nine
Sally Neighbour The Australian August 27, 2010

WHEN Lee Rush learned in April 2005 that his son Scott was off to Bali, he felt sick.

Scott had no money, no passport - as far as his father knew - and a history of drug use. Rush phoned an old lawyer friend, Robert Myers, who voiced his worst fears: that Scott might be travelling as a paid courier to carry drugs.

The two men agreed the 19-year-old had to be stopped. Myers rang a contact in the Australian Federal Police and asked him to have Scott intercepted before he left the country, on suspicion of illegal activity. By his account, he was assured this would happen.

But the AFP took a different course. Instead, as the young Queenslander was preparing to fly out of Australia, the AFP tipped off their counterparts in the Indonesian National Police. Nine days later Rush was arrested with three other mules at Bali's Denpasar airport as they were about to return home with nearly 8kg of heroin strapped to their bodies. In September 2006 an Indonesian court sentenced Rush to death.

Yesterday, Scott Rush, now aged 24, appeared in court in Denpasar to appeal against the death sentence, which was handed down in a shock decision after prosecutors appealed against his original sentence of life in prison.

Rush's hopes for avoiding the death penalty rely heavily on letters from the AFP saying he was only a courier, not an organiser. But the AFP's belated intervention in Rush's favour may be too late. His supporters ask, if Scott Rush is sent to the firing squad, will the AFP, to quote Myers, have "his blood on their hands?"

Rush's journey from Brisbane to Bali's Kerobokan prison began in his teens when he started using cannabis and then amphetamines, ecstasy and finally heroin. He was expelled from Brisbane's Saint Laurence College in Year 10 for drug use, and pleaded guilty in the Inala Magistrates Court in 2004 to drug possession, drink-driving, theft and fraud.

Around this time, at a karaoke bar in Brisbane, Rush met a young Vietnamese-Australian, Thanh Nguyen, three years his senior. In early 2005 Nguyen offered Rush and an old school friend, Michael Czugaj, also 19, a free holiday in Bali, Czugaj later testified.

Unknown to Rush, Nguyen and his cohorts were already under investigation by the AFP. A few months earlier some of the group had travelled to Bali to organise an importation of heroin but, according to AFP intelligence, "the importation was cancelled because there was not enough money to buy the stuff." Nguyen recruited Rush for a second attempt.

Lee Rush learned of his son's trip when a travel agent phoned the family home about his flight booking on April 7, 2005, the day before Scott was due to fly out.

"This phone call made us feel absolutely sick in the stomach," Lee Rush told ABC's Australian Story in 2006. "It was a gut feeling more than anything, possibly there was some link with drugs."

His barrister friend, Myers, called a Queensland policeman he knew, Damon Patching, who was on secondment to the AFP, and asked if Rush could be stopped at the airport, on the grounds that he had prior convictions, was on bail at the time, and suspected of "being up to no good". Myers later told the Federal Court that Patching assured him it would be taken care of. But Patching testified: "My conclusion at this stage was that there was no reason for Scott Rush to be detained and that he should be allowed to leave without being disturbed. My view was that despite the concerns of Lee Rush, Scott Rush was an adult and there was no basis for detaining [him]."

On April 8, the same day Rush flew out of Australia, the AFP sent a letter to the Indonesian National Police, headed "Subject: Heroin couriers from Bali to Australia."

The letter, since tendered in evidence, set out in great detail what the AFP knew about the looming heroin importation.

Four couriers recruited by Nguyen and the accused organiser, Andrew Chan, had already left for Bali. Another three including Rush were due to leave Australia that day. They would return a week later with heroin in packs strapped to their legs and back. They had been instructed by the organisers to wear oversized clothes for concealment, avoid carrying metal so as not to set off airport detectors, and to bring back wooden carvings to declare to quarantine in order to bypass Customs. They had also been instructed not to smoke cigarettes for two weeks prior to travel as they would be unable to smoke on the return flight and the organisers didn't want them looking nervous.

The AFP letter requested the INP to attempt to keep the group under surveillance, identify the source of the drugs, and obtain as much evidence and intelligence as possible to help the AFP nail the organisers in Australia, other than Chan. The most crucial paragraph of the AFP letter advised the INP: "should they suspect that Chan and/or the couriers are in possession of drugs at the time of their departure, that they take what action they deem appropriate."

Four days later, on April 12, 2005, a second letter was sent by the AFP to their Indonesian counterparts, providing the dates, times and flight details of the group's return to Australia. Chan and four of the couriers were due to fly back to Australia on April 14, while Rush, Nguyen and Czugaj were due to fly two days later, on Saturday the 16th.

This letter, from the AFP's senior liaison officer in Bali, Paul Hunniford, advised: "If arrests are made [in Indonesia] on 14 April, it is likely that Nguyen, Czugaj and Rush will become suspicious of the arrest and decide not to attempt to board the Saturday flight with narcotics. I therefore request that you consider searching Nguyen, Czugaj and Rush soon after the first group are intercepted."

The AFP's letters sealed the fate of the Australians who became known as the Bali Nine.

"The federal police knew at the time that it was inevitable the nine of them could face the death penalty and that's the abhorrent thing about it," Myers says.

"They would have known there was a real risk that all nine of them would die, and they were prepared to sacrifice them."

He believes the AFP was trying to curry favour with the Indonesians to win their support on counter-terrorism. "And I think they felt that if they gave them nine lives the Indonesians couldn't resist their pleas for co-operation on terrorism."

As per the AFP's instructions, the Indonesian police moved in as the first group of couriers waited at Denpasar airport for their return flight to Australia. Rush, Michael Czugaj, Renae Lawrence and Martin Stephens were caught at the airport with 8kg of heroin strapped to their bodies. Four others, Nguyen, Myuran Sukumaran, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman, were arrested at a Kuta hotel. The alleged organiser, Chan, was detained without drugs after boarding a plane for Sydney.

The accused ringleaders of the group, Chan and Sukumaran, were sentenced to death in February 2006. Norman, Stephens, Czugaj, Chan and Nguyen are serving life terms while Lawrence is serving twenty years.

Rush's life term was unexpectedly replaced with a death sentence after prosecutors appealed in September 2006.

Since the Bali Nine's capture, the AFP has been widely criticised for tipping off the INP and authorising their arrest in Indonesia, rather than allowing them to return to Australia where they might have led police to the leaders of the drug ring and then faced punishment under Australian law. The NSW Council for Civil Liberties has described the AFP's conduct as "outrageous", saying "If these Australians are put before a firing squad, it will be because the AFP helped to put them there."

In 2006, the Rush family took the AFP to the Federal Court, alleging police had acted negligently and without lawful authority by disclosing information to the Indonesians that led to Australian citizens facing the death penalty.

The Mutual Assistance Treaty that sets out the terms of police co-operation between Australia and Indonesia allows for assistance to be refused in cases where the death penalty may apply. The AFP's own Death Penalty Charge Guide provides that "assistance may be refused in the absence of an assurance from the requesting country that the death penalty would not be imposed". However, this applies only to cases in which charges are pending, whereas in the case of the Bali Nine, no charges had yet been laid.

As a result, Justice Paul Finn ruled that the federal police's conduct "fell squarely within the lawful functions of the AFP. Scott Rush and his colleagues were the authors of their own harm," the judge ruled.

However, Finn urged the federal government and the AFP to review the procedures followed when providing information to foreign police forces that could expose an Australian citizen to the death penalty.

On instructions from the attorney-general, the AFP guidelines on co-operation were overhauled in December last year. "It's been fixed up so the same thing can't happen again," says Myers. "I think the new guidelines are about right and had they been in place we wouldn't have three Australian citizens on death row."

Aside from the AFP's role, there are many unanswered questions about the Indonesian police's handling of their end of the Bali Nine investigation, including why they failed to identify the source of the narcotics in Indonesia, as requested by the AFP. A Thai prostitute whom Chan is said to have used as a contact has reportedly disappeared, while a major heroin trafficker suspected of supplying the drugs was shot dead in a police raid in Jakarta, according to press reports. One theory - which remains unproven - is that corrupt Indonesian police may have had a hand in the deal.

In a hearing in Denpasar yesterday, Scott Rush's lawyers argued that the imposition of the death penalty in his case is manifestly unjust. If this argument fails, his last chance to escape the firing squad will be an appeal to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has never granted clemency in a drug case.

Rush's best hope lies in a letter written by former AFP commissioner Mick Keelty before his retirement last year, which describes Rush as merely a courier. "There is no indication that Scott was an organiser or aware of the scale of the organisation behind the volume of drug importations," the letter says.

Keelty could not be reached for comment, and Scott Rush's parents, Lee and Christine, said they would make no statement while their son's appeal is before the court.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/fe ... 5910600831
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frank lee bent
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by frank lee bent »

crocodile tears by abbot.
anything to bolster his complete lack of veracity.

love photo ops and distraction like all the rest of those preening wankers.

short memory, must have a
short memory.
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by phuketrichard »

That's quite a harsh stance from the biggest proponent of illegal drug use on either forum.
Naaaa , not even close :-)

i have always made a business of moving one item or more somewhere where i could sell it for a profit
always was aware of where i was , where i was transiting and where I was going and the penalties

Only a fool would step inside Indonesia, when there are better countries to transit thru where the penalties are not as harsh.
In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. HST
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Dr Anik
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by Dr Anik »

phuketrichard wrote:...Only a fool would step inside Indonesia, when there are better countries to transit thru where the penalties are not as harsh.
This, in a nutshell.

Though I did spare a thought for the Thai woman executed last month. She had grovelled in front of the judges early on but when came the time for execution she asked to be uncuffed. In contrast, the Brazilian chap had to be dragged screaming from his cell, being denied his last rights from a catholic priest...poor bastard, but they have all brought it upon themselves.

Some, like the Aust. men, have had 8-10 years in jail and if they had not been caught then, may well be dead by now anyway, given their 'gangster' lifestyles.
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Re: Australian pressure cannot prevent drug executions

Post by MekongMouse »

It was stupid, but I still feel really bad for them. I'm not surprised to learn the Aussie pigs had a role in their death either. The father basically ratted his son out too, sure he thought he was saving him, but damn he's going to live with that guilt the rest of his life.
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