Death Penalty for Drug Smugglers

Warrigal

Warrigal

SF VIP
Location
Sydney, Australia
Currently our news is saturated with the impending execution of two Australian nationals for the offence of attempting to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia and into Australia.

Some background (from memory) - nine young Australians planned to visit Bali and bring a sizable quantity of heroin home with them. One of the nine's parents learned of this and alerted the Federal Police, hoping that they would be intercepted before leaving Sydney. Instead, the AFP tipped off the Indonesians who caught them at the airport in Bali with the drugs and arrested them.

Indonesia has the death penalty and Australia has a policy of not delivering people into the hands of any nation that is likely to execute them but this is , exactly what happened. Two of the Bali nine were sentenced to death for being the organisers. The AFP could simply have waited and intercepted them on arrival back in Australia for some unknown reason delivered them to the Indonesians.

Ten years after sentence, the two condemned men are now facing a firing squad having exhausted every legal avenue open to them. Appeals for clemency have been rejected and diplomatic efforts have proved fruitless, even counter productive. Our Foreign Minister has offered to trade three Indonesian drug smugglers for the lives of these two men, not for their freedom but for the sentence to be commuted to life in prison. However, they have already been transferred to the island where executions take place, at midnight in a jungle setting by firing squad. There will be others shot at the same time. Nearly all of them are foreign nationals.

What makes this tragic is that both of these men have been transformed while in prison. They have become assets to the prison authorities and the prison governor is one of the people pleading their case. One is now a Christian pastor and the other has redeemed himself by becoming an artist. Neither resembles their younger selves of over ten years ago.

Indonesia appeared to be very lenient to the organiser of the Bali bombings, a radical cleric named Abu Bakur Bashir, although they did execute others who set the bombs. I suppose it is possible to equate terrorists and drug smugglers but the prevailing public opinion over here is that executing these two men, so long after the event is now rather pointless.

I just hope that they will find the strength to die with their dignity intact.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...han-and-myuran-sukumaran-20150304-13vgaw.html

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/op...ese-men-are-dead/story-fni0fg0d-1227248341076
 

Death penalty for a drug offence, so sad. For murder, yes.
 

My gosh, their parents hearts must be breaking and they must be terrified. At least the pastor fellow will have his faith to hang on to and that may give him some strength.

What a sad, pointless decision :(.
 
I just heard this on our late news, Australia is trying
to do a deal and swap prisoners, to get them back
to OZ.
They have not yet had any reply.

Mike.
 
It's a lost cause, I'm afraid.

One part of me is saying that they knew the penalty when they committed the crime.
Anyone from Australia even then knew that places like Singapore and Indonesia would execute foreign drug smugglers.
This is not the first time Australian drug smugglers have been executed.

The other part of me is saying that our authorities could have played their hand differently and they could have faced our courts when they tried to enter Australia.
I do feel for the parents, especially the ones who appealed to the Federal Police for help. They have every right to feel betrayed.
 
Well, as I've said before, I'm a bit of a hard-ass, but IMHO the main betrayal was by their "children" who took the stupid chance on committing the drug smuggling offense, knowing the chance they were taking with their lives.
 
I am ambivalent about the pending executions but the harm caused by heroin is a powerful argument for...
 
I am opposed to the death penalty as too many have been executed and found later to be innocent, but that's in the US.

This is horrible for these criminals families but I wonder why they were so stupid not to have learned from the mistakes of others and realized you don't commit any kind of crime in one of these countries. And this was heroin, not marijuana! Sentences are much stiffer than in their own countries, and execution is often the punishment.
 
Has anyone here ever witnessed an execution comparable to how it's done here in the U.S. by lethal injection? I witnessed Gary Heidnik here in PA on behalf of the Governor. It's a long story on how this all comes about being chosen to do this, but I kept thinking to myself about the multiple women that he raped and murdered. I am not saying that I am for or against the death penalty, but if you take the time to read about what all he did, it doesn't seen like such a bad idea.


There is NO doubt about his guilt.
 
It another country. Outsiders can ask, request or hope they aren't executed but it's not their place. Unless there is death involved in the crime I wouldn't even consider the death penalty. But again it's their way of deterring and/or controlling drug problems.
 
The possibility of a prisoner swap is not on, for a start we don't have the Death penalty here in Oz ( and yes I am thankful for that) My heart goes out to their families and also to the families who have lost loved ones due to the heroin these people import. I don't want them to be put to death but life in jail ( meaning life ) yes! We have no idea how many times before these men brought Heroin into this country and heroin is a death penalty eventually for those that take it.
 
As the fictional detective Baretta used to say, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. Especially with heroin, and especially in such a primitive land.

Yeah, it's tough on the parents, but maybe they shouldn't have ratted out their own kids ... now they'll have to live with that.
 
I read yesterday Indonesia had rejected a prisoner swap and the Austraans had been moved to a small island where they are to be shot.
 
The Australians were moved from Bali to the island where they will be executed with the most over the top security that you have ever seen. In contrast, a Nigerian drug smuggler was moved in a small van. These men are not terrorists and the Australian government is not going to mount and Entebbe style rescue. Widodo does seem to be giving a public finger to Australia which will play well to the home crowd.

On the plane from Bali the police chief posed for trophy photos with each of the condemned men. This is not going down well in Oz.

http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/n...-photos-spark-official-complaint-6325473.html

The executions have been delayed because four of the condemned still have appeals in train, including the two Aussies.
I don't think they will get anywhere with the appeals.
 

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