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| Bali nine leaders to make death sentence appeals |
Last chance: Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2006 (AFP: Jewel Samad, file photo) |
August 13, 2010
BALI nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran will launch their final appeals against their death sentences today, lawyers have revealed.
The pair's Bali-based lawyer Nyoman Gede Sudiantara says his team will submit the appeals, known as judicial reviews, to the Denpasar District Court this morning.
But Mr Sudiantara declined to reveal any details of the appeals, such as what new evidence will underpin them or what witnesses might be called to testify at fresh hearings.
''Regarding all that, we will explain later, after we have submitted the documents to the court,'' he said.
Court officials confirmed they were expecting the appeal documents to be lodged today.
Chan, 26, and Sukumaran, 29, were two of nine Australians convicted over a 2005 plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia.
Their judicial reviews are being launched less than a month after fellow Bali nine death row inmate Scott Rush launched his own appeal.
A panel of three judges is expected to begin hearing that appeal - which pushes for a 15-year sentence for the 24-year-old - next Wednesday.
If the final appeals fail, the three men will be left with one last chance to avoid the firing squad - clemency from Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
AAP
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| Myuran Sukumaran - Bali's death row Dali |
But is it art? ... Myuran Sukumaran with one of his paintings / Pic: Lukman S. Bintoro Source: The Daily Telegraph |
Cindy Wockner in Bali From: The Daily Telegraph August 05, 2010 12:00AM
WHEN he first started painting, Myuran Sukumaran thought he would illustrate the wall and barbed wire of his Bali jail, showing the place he often dreamed of jumping over.
But when he put brush to canvas and tried to make the barbed wire a fiery red, he decided that painting a wall was all wrong.
Instead, inspired by memories of his life as a free man and off Bali's death row, he decided to make a painting featuring jasmine flowers.
Yesterday, Sukumaran and Bali Nine heroin smuggler Andrew Chan gave The Daily Telegraph an exclusive preview of paintings they and other prisoners are doing for use in an art exhibition to be held later this month.
The prisoners are part of a twice-weekly art class run inside Kerobokan Jail by Australian art teacher Sandy Elliott, who is on a year's leave from his Brisbane teaching job. Sukumaran was excited as he showed off the paintings he and other Bali Nine members, such as Michael Czugaj, Martin Stephens and Matt Norman, have done. But he is coy and embarrassed about the meaning of the jasmine flower.
"I can't tell you that. That's a secret," he said, laughing, when it was suggested the jasmine reminds him of a woman in his past.
"The flower has a reason, something I was thinking about at the time. It is not just a flower, it symbolises something. The purple has got something to do with the flower as well."
Sukumaran once had a jasmine plant but it died and now he never smells jasmine.
Sukumaran, Chan and Scott Rush are all on death row in Bali for their roles in an 8kg heroin trafficking operation.
The three have one last appeal left, known as a judicial review, in which to plead for mercy and have their death sentences reduced.
One of the two paintings Chan has done so far for the exhibition, which he calls A Touch of Life, includes stars.
These days, locked up in his cell from early evening, he never sees the stars.
Chan said he tries not to dwell on the death penalty.
"If you have no control over it, why let it bother you?" he said.
His paintings for the exhibition are not about life in jail.
"It's miserable, why would I paint something miserable, I want to be happy," he said.
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