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More get life in Bali drug case
15/02/2006 12:58 - (SA)
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| Australians, from left to right, Si Yi Chen, Matthew James Norman and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen sit on the defendant's chair during their trial at a district court in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. (Firdia Lisnawati, AP)
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Denpasar - Indonesian judges on Wednesday sentenced three more Australians to life imprisonment for taking part in a drug ring exporting heroin from Bali to Australia.
The sentences were the last to be delivered to the so-called Bali Nine gang of Australians. The two ringleaders were handed the death penalty, while four others were also given life sentences under Indonesia's tough drugs laws.
Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen, 28, Matthew Norman, 19, and Si Yi Chen, 21, were all found guilty on Wednesday of illegally exporting first-class narcotics in an organised way, said Denpasar state court judge Istiningsih Rahayu.
Rahayu said the panel of judges consequently decided to "issue the life sentence to each of the defendants".
The neatly-dressed trio, who were jointly on trial, appeared calm when their sentences were read out. They did not comment to the press.
They were arrested at a hotel in Bali's Kuta district on April 17 last year with a stash of 334 grams of heroin after the gang's mules were nabbed at the airport carrying just under 11 kilograms of the drug.
"They were awaiting another delivery of heroin at their hotel," prosecutor Oloan Nainggolan told the court.
The three arrived in Bali on flights on April 6 and 8. Ten days later Nguyen helped ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan - the pair sentenced to death - strap packages of heroin to the bodies of four couriers.
'Disappointed at the verdict'
Mohammad Rifan, one of the trio's lawyers, said they were "disappointed at the verdict."
"We will consult with our clients but our advice is that they should appeal," he told reporters.
Rahayu, who headed the panel of judges that sentenced Bali bomber Ali Ghufron to death in 2004, said their decision had not been easy.
"They are humans just as I am... but we must take into account the prevailing feeling of justice among the people," she told AFP.
Australia, which abolished the death penalty more than 20 years ago, promised on Wednesday it would lobby hard to save 22-year-old Chan and 24-year-old Sukumaran from an Indonesian firing squad.
Prime Minister John Howard said the government would wait until the legal appeals process had been completed before lobbying Jakarta.
"After that has been exhausted, if there is still a death penalty pending, then we'll make representations," Howard told Australian radio. "I don't want to raise expectations."
The case has provoked a furore in Australia, with critics charging that the Australian police, who tipped off their Indonesian counterparts, should not have risked exposing the nine to the death penalty.
- AFP
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