Experts point finger at AFP over Bali Nine

A WIDE range of criminal-law experts are critical of the Australian Federal Police’s role in the Bali Nine being arrested in Indonesia.

A WIDE range of criminal-law experts across Australian universities are critical of the Australian Federal Police’s role in causing the Bali Nine heroin-smugglers to be arrested in Indonesia and the force’s failure to explain why.

Sydney University professor of criminal justice Mark Findlay identified a high level of expert disquiet about the AFP’s role while organising a petition this week for President Joko Widodo to spare the lives of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Professor Findlay also believes the AFP’s problem explaining the April 2005 arrests of the nine and their exposure to execution in Indon­esia is not likely to go away with the impending deaths of Chan and Sukumaran.

“If these fellows are shot, I will not be surprised if the relatives take civil action … against the head of the (AFP) operation at the time,” he said.

Such legal action could target a series of people in the AFP chain of command, including Mick Keelty, then federal police commissioner.

Professor Findlay’s petition was signed within about 24 hours by 120 legal academics and criminologists from a dozen universities, including deans of law schools and professors, and generated strong feedback from them.

The number of signatories has increased to 150 since it was handed to Indonesia’s ambassador in Canberra, Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, on Tuesday night. “One really strong point was that the Australian police action put these people in a situation where they are now facing capital punishment,” Professor Findlay told The Australian.

He agreed the experts were as puzzled as the Bali Nine families and many members of the public about why the couriers were not allowed to board Australia-bound planes and arrested at the other end. “From a policing point of view, there was never any risk of these people not being caught when they came into Australia.”

Some experts had “more radical views” about the AFP’s motivation in giving up the nine to the Indonesian national police, Professor Findlay said.

But the baseline view of the signatories was that “there is a case to answer that (the AFP) have to explain­”, rather than continuing to use the shield of non-disclosure of operational matters.

The petition includes a joint statement from the signatories: “We do not see this punishment as either an issue of national sovereignty or of just desserts. The Australian police gave up these two men to a capital punishment jurisdiction as part of an operation which could have led to prosecutions and trials in Australia, where the death penalty is not an option.”

Barrister Julian McMahon said outside Kerobokan jail in Bali yesterday that the men’s lawyers were not interfering with the sovereignty of Indonesian law by “pleading and begging” with Mr Joko and Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo for their lives.

“This case is not about us Australians or Australian lawyers or people in the team attacking or under­mining Indonesian sovereignty or … Indonesia’s legal system,’’ he said.

“Really it is about humanity, and humanity crosses borders, humanity is not constrained by sovereignty.”

The team’s Indonesian lawyers are trying to stop Chan and Suku­maran being transferred to Nusa­kambangan, the prison island where they are to be executed, while they appeal against the Jakarta Administrative Court’s refusal this week to hear their case against Mr Joko’s refusal of clemency. Lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis said the men had 14 days from Tuesday to lodge an appeal and it would be a mockery of judicial process if they were transferred in the meantime.