This is the end
Haunting self- portrait reveals torment of Myuran Sukumaran just hours before Bali duo’s execution
INDONESIA delivered a final insult to the Chan and Sukumaran families yesterday, robbing them of three precious hours together at the island prison where their loved ones will tonight be shot dead.
As 1200 police and military began arriving in the area in another show of force, officials showed no mercy to the Bali Nine duo’s shattered relatives.
Despite a chorus of indignation from around the world, the young Australians and seven others will face a firing squad shortly after midnight tonight, their fate sealed in execution notices callously issued on Anzac Day.
And even with their deaths imminent, authorities refused to take off the pair’s handcuffs during their first visit from family who had rushed to be with them from Australia.
“It was too much,” said Indonesian friend and former prisoner Matius Arif of witnessing Sukumaran trying to hug his mother Raji.
“We will be remembered as a nation that killed a priest, not a drug dealer. We will be remembered as a nation that killed an artist, not a drug dealer ... history will record us as a nation that kills people who have repented, a nation that lost empathy and mercy to people who have repented.”
The families wasted hours of their final days with Chan and Sukumaran owing to changes to the visiting system which had not been passed on to Australian authorities.
When the group – including 13 supporting Sukumaran and 11 supporting Chan – arrived at Cilicap at 8am, officials told them the rules had changed.
They said officials from the district Attorney- General’s office had now taken over the visiting process and new paperwork was needed.
The families were forced to travel downtown to the prosecutor’s office and all physically be present for the new paperwork to be completed.
That process took almost an hour before they got back to the port and spent another 40 minutes being searched before they were finally on the boat to Nusakambangan at 11.30am.
The coffins in which the bodies will be placed after the executions are now at the Cilacap police compound and it is understood they will be taken to the island this afternoon.
Salvation Army minister David Soper, a lifelong family friend, has been chosen as Chan’s religious adviser and will witness his last moments.
Sukumaran will have Christie Buckingham, a pastor from Melbourne’s Bayside Church.
It came as the pair’s lead Indonesian lawyer demanded the executions be halted so claims of a $ 130,000 bribe request from the judges who sentenced them can be investigated.
Todung Mulya Lubis says
the claims, by former counsel Muhammad Rifan, that the money could buy a verdict lower than 20 years, need urgent examination by the country’s Judicial Commission.
But one of the judges involved in the 2006 case denied he and his colleagues demanded a $ 133,000 bribe. Wayan Yasa Abadi said he had never been contacted by the men’s lawyers about a bribe.
Judge Abadi said he had not yet been questioned by the Judicial Commission – which was alerted to the claims in broad terms months ago – but was ready for an inquiry.
A spokesman for Australian Attorney- General George Brandis last night said a constitutional challenge, set down for May 12 by Indonesian authorities yesterday, would not delay the executions.