Hope of sentence cut for Bali Nine after penal code revision

A revised penal code has emerged for the six Bali Nine drug-smugglers imprisoned on life terms in Indonesia.

Australian Scott Rush pictured in December 2014. Picture: Made Nagi

The six remaining Bali Nine drug-smugglers jailed for life in Indonesia may soon be looking at the prospect of reduced prison sentences. On the eve of their 11th anniver­sary behind bars, the convicted drug couriers have a ray of hope in the form of a revised penal code, which is slated to go before ­Indonesia’s parliament in a few months.

The draft revision, viewed by The Weekend Australian, offers the prospect of reduced life sentences. If it is approved, a new legal framework would facilitate well-behaved prisoners who have served 17 years of their life terms being released on parole.

The president also has authority to grant remissions or clemency at any time.

The six Bali Nine couriers — Martin Stephens, 39; Matthew Norman, 29; Michael Czugaj, Si Yi Chen and Scott Rush, all 30; and Tan Duc Than Nguyen, 32 — have been desperate for fixed terms to enable them to earn remissions and early release.

Only inmates not serving life or death sentences are entitled to remissions at present, although there is also scope in the draft for well-behaved inmates facing the death penalty to be downgraded to life or 20 years.

Bali Nine ringleaders Myuran Suku­maran and Andrew Chan were executed on April 29 last year for their parts in the 2005 plot to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Bali to Australia.

Yesterday Norman, who has monthly tests to prove he is drug-free, conveyed from Kerobokan jail that there was fresh hope. He has been applying to downgrade his sentence to 20 years for the past five.

Newcastle woman Renae Lawrence, 38, the one female and only member of the Bali Nine with a fixed 20-year term, is scheduled for parole, possibly next year after numerous­ remissions for good behaviour. Her scheduled release date was 2026.

After being on the backburner for about 18 months, the draft revision is the first tangible hope the six have of gaining fixed terms. All their legal avenues have been exhausted.

Under current legislation, drug convicts are ineligible for reductio­ns. It is unknown if President Joko Widodo would downgrade such sentences. In late 2014, before two batches of executions including Chan and Sukumaran, he said Indonesia was facing a drugs scourge that needed “shock therapy”.

Stephens’s former lawyer Wirawan Adnan believes Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yasonna Laoly will revise the law. “So there is hope,’’ he said.

This month, the seven members of the Bali Nine scattered around Indonesian jails will have been jailed for 11 years.

Indonesian lawyer Anggia Lubis Browne, who represents Lawrence, said she would request Mr Widodo grant clemency to the six. “It’s time the six Australians on life terms are released on humanitarian grounds,” she told The Weekend Australian. “Send them back … They have to have hope. They were just mules. They have done their punishment.’’

However, Mr Adnan believes a clemency plea for drug crimes is “a waste of time’’.

“The President is trying to win his second term and things like that would not be in his favour, it’s not popular,’’ he said. “Schapelle Corby caused polit­ical turbulence and that cost SBY (former president Susilo Bambang Yudho­yono) some political damage.’’

Corby, jailed in 2004 for 20 years for smuggling drugs into Bali and released after nine years, was granted 30 months in ­remissions and a five-year sentence cut by Dr Yudhoyono after applying for clemency..