Scott Rush, Another Bali Nine Member, Breaks Silence On Chan And Sukumaran’s Looming Execution
Scott Rush has spoken up on the looming execution of his Bali Nine co-members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. The 29-year-old former labourer is reportedly “shocked and heartbroken” about the duo’s fate.
Rush told the Weekend Australian through a friend what he thought of the entire situation, sending his love to Chan and Sukumaran’s families. He, along with Chan, Sukumaran and six other Australians in the media-dubbed Bali Nine, was arrested in 2005 in Bali for attempting to smuggle heroin to Australia. He was originally sentenced to life imprisonment, but the appeals court changed it to death penalty before his sentenced was commuted to life imprisonment by the Indonesian Supreme Court in 2011.
“I am praying for Myuran and Andrew and for the other condemned prisoners that even at this time mercy can’t be shown. I send my love and prayers to the families and loved ones. May God bless them all,” he said.
Lee Rush, his father, was instrumental in the capture of the Bali Nine gang. He asked a family friend, lawyer Bob Myers, to contact the Australian Federal Police when he suspected his son travelled to Bali to commit a drug offence. Lee was apparently assured by the AFP that they would warn him in Indonesia before he could commit a crime. However, AFP alerted the Indonesian police two weeks before the group’s arrest on April 17, 2005.
While Rush felt sad about Chan and Sukumaran’s looming fate, the reports that he was feeling guilty were “ill founded,” his lawyer Robert Welfare said.
Chan and Sukumaran, who were both determined in court to be the ringleaders of the group, have been transferred from Kerobokan prison to Nusakambangan Island, where they will be executed. However, their execution has been delayed, with attorney-general’s office allowing the duo to exhaust all their legal recourses before the execution could go ahead.
The pair’s lawyers are challenging the rejection of clemency by President Joko Widodo, saying the Indonesian leader didn’t follow due process when he refused clemency to a total of 64 drug offenders without going through each one of them. The administrative court already threw out the challenge, saying it did not have the authority to see to the case. But the lawyers are now appealing, with a date set for Thursday.
They are also pursuing a complaint in the judicial commission about the judges who gave the pair death sentence. Chan and Sukumaran’s former lawyer claimed that they were asked by the judges payment in exchange for a lighter sentence for the two.
Another Bali Nine member, Martin Stephens, has also broken his silence about the pair’s execution. Writing in a letter to The Australian, Stephens, who has married an Indonesian woman in 2011, reckoned that it would be “more humane” if the Indonesian government would shoot and kill him now like what they would do to Chan and Sukumaran than let him languish in prison without any hope.
“Isn’t 20 years a bad enough penalty? But life means no hope. It means I will die in prison. Can you imagine having to live like that?” he wrote. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
