| Home > South-East Asia >> Indonesia | |
Bali nine executions: Investigation into bribery allegations completed by judicial commission
Sydney Morning Herald - April 28, 2015
In a bizarre media statement released overnight, the commission – which safeguards the probity of the Indonesian judicial system – said it had finished the probe but did not say what its findings were. Instead, it urged the Supreme Court to further investigate the explosive bribery allegations.
The former lawyer for the Australian drug smugglers during the 2006 trial, Muhammad Rifan, revealed on February 7 that there had been irregularities in the case.
In cryptic remarks made after visiting the Bali nine duo in Kerobokan prison, he said: "It's something that implicates us, it could discredit me. But for them I will take it."
He refused to publicly expand on the comments until on Monday, Fairfax Media revealed details of allegations, with Mr Rifan saying judges had asked for 1 billion rupiah (about $130,000) for a sentence of less than 20 years.
The deal fell through after the judges later told him they had been ordered by senior legal and government members in Jakarta to impose a death penalty.
The judges, it is alleged, then asked for an even greater sum for a lighter sentence. Mr Rifan declined to reveal the amount but said he could not possibly pay the alleged bribe.
Both the alleged bribes and interference from Jakarta are prohibited under Indonesian law.
Mr Rifan said he went public because the judicial commission had failed to interview him, and his former clients were about to be killed. He urged that the executions – expected soon after midnight Tuesday – be postponed until a thorough investigation was complete.
In its statement, the judicial commission said the investigation "was conducted professionally, carefully and without intervention from any party". It added that it had "no authority to change the judges' decision, including postponing the executions on Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran."
Nevertheless, it "expects the Supreme Court to be active investigating the bribery allegations".
The statement surprised and disturbed lawyers for the Bali nine duo. One of them, Todung Mulya Lubis, had recently received a letter from the commission summonsing him to an interview next week.
"That means they have just started the investigation," he said. "They still need to question all these key people. Both Rifan and of course Sukumaran and Andrew Chan."
Asked if the judicial commission had been subjected to political interference, Mr Todung said: "They made a very strange statement. I don't think executions should take place if the investigations have not taken place. I don't even know what is the outcome of the investigation."
On Monday night, Indonesian president Joko Widodo responded to Fairfax Media's report by saying "Such things should have been exposed years ago... Why it wasn't revealed in the past when it happened?"
But Barrister Julian McMahon, who also works for Chan and Sukumaran, pointed out that as soon as Mr Rifan made his remarks, an application for the judicial commission was lodged within days.
It was given a case file number by the commission in early March. Ever since, he said, the probe had apparently stalled.
"The allegation is only two and a half months old," he said. "As far as we are concerned, the investigation is obviously not yet complete. In reality, it hasn't even commenced."
See also:
 |