As Bali Nine convicts await their execution after midnight on Tuesday, their former lawyer Muhammad Rifan has given more details about the alleged corruption by sentencing judges. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, however, wondered why the bribery allegation against the judges came only hours before the scheduled execution.

Widodo said that bribery allegations should have come much earlier as there were only hours before Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran would be facing the firing squad. “Things like this should have been conveyed years ago,” the Indonesian president told reporters in Jakarta.

Rifan accused sentencing judges of demanding more than $130,000 for a sentence lesser than death. Widodo wondered why the lawyer had not talked about it when the judges had allegedly made the demands.

The former Bali Nine lawyer said that the judges had promised that they would give the Australian convicts less than 20 years of jail time instead of the death penalty in lieu of the bribe. Rifan said that he was later informed that senior legal and government members in Jakarta had asked the judges to impose a death penalty. It was the time when the judges asked for even more money, Rifan alleged.

Julie Bishop made an appeal again on the basis of the allegations. The Australian foreign minister said that there should be no execution until the allegations were tested.

Widodo was coming home from an ASEAN meeting in Malaysia. Philippine President Benigno Aquino requested clemency for Filipino single mother Mary Jane Veloso, one of the convicts facing death row. Widodo said that he would have to consult the attorney-general before responding to Aquino’s appeal.

Attorney General HM Prasetyo earlier said that the bribery allegations would have no impact on the Indonesian president’s decision to execute drug convicts. He also echoed the president’s comment on why the allegations had taken so much time to surface.

While there is a strong assumption that Chan and Sukumaran would be executed after the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, Prasetyo refused to confirm it. "If you haven't heard it from me, don't say you're sure the execution will be on Tuesday," he said.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au

RELATED STORIES