Posted 09 November 2006 @ 09:36
Updated 09 November 2006 @ 09:47
JAKARTA, 09 November 2006 - Indonesia's Attorney General's Office(AGO) is giving the lawyers of the three 2002 Bali bombing convicts until the end of the month to file for a Supreme Court review of their cases or it will set an execution date in the near future. "The date will be set if there is no further legal intervention from their lawyers along the way," said attorney general Abdul Rahman, who believes the three bombers should be executed soon to avoid further delays.
Lawyers for the three men convicted of the Bali nightclub bombings on 12 October 2002 which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourisits - Amrozi, Imam Samudera and Ali Gufron - had been too slow in their handling of the case review, Rahman claimed. The Denpasar District Court handed down the verdict on Amrozi, Imam Samudera and Ali Gufron on 22 August. The executions have been delayed, however, because the defendants' lawyers objected to the method of execution - by firing squad - and said they would file a case review.
"We will file a judicial review soon with the Constitutional Court on the 1964 Death Penalty Law because an execution by firing squad in Nusa Kambangan Prison could inflict suffering on (the convict)," said lawyer Mahendradatta. Mahendradatta told The Jakarta Post on that Amrozi's legal team had accepted the death sentence but believed that the execution method contradicted the 1945 Constitution, which stipulates that citizens are not to be put through undue suffering.
"In the history of this country, Indonesia has never used an execution method that inflicts minimum pain. This has to change," he added. He said it would take two minutes for the men to die after they had been shot. "Now we need to have confirmation from the AGO over what kind of execution the trio will receive," said Mahendradatta, who is also the coordinator for a group of Muslim lawyers.
"We will request a case review from the Supreme Court because it had based its verdict using a retrospective law. Even the Attorney General cannot interrupt this. However, we still need a copy of the written verdict from the Denpasar District Court," he said.
Mahendradatta said that the three men had been tried retroactively under an anti-terror law passed six days after the bombings.
Amrozi, Samudra and Gufron have been awaiting their executions at Batu Nusakambangan Prison in Cilacap, Central Java, since October 2005, when they were transferred there from Kerobokan Prison in Denpasar, Bali. They bombed two nightclubs in Kuta, Bali, and were specifically targeting western tourists. The 2002 attack, followed by another bombing in January 2005, crippled the tourism sector of Bali.
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