The Administrative Court in Indonesia has rejected Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran‘s bid to appeal their clemency rejection, eliminating one of their absolute final avenues of legal appeal to stave off their planned death sentence from being carried out.
The pair had lodged their appeal to the Indonesian court system in an attempt to challenge President Joko Widodo‘s decision to deny them clemency on the basis that Joko had issued blanket rejections for a high number of candidates without examining cases on an individual basis.
However the court found that it was not within the Administrative Court’s jurisdiction to hear the matter on a legal level, asserting that the issue was instead Constitutional in nature, and therefore was an issue for the President and his own discretion, rather than one for the judicial system to hear.
Sukumaran and Chan were not present in court to hear the verdict – they remain held in a special prison on Nusakambangan Island, where it is expected their death sentences will be carried out.
The appeals process is now all-but exhausted for the pair, with the last major remaining option being a direct appeal to President Widodo for clemency. Though given the path these cases have taken, that seems sadly unlikely to occur at this point.
The Indonesian Government has yet to set a date or timeframe for the sentences to be carried out on the pair.
Chan and Sukumaran’s lawyers have asserted that they will continue to fight to the pair for as long as possible, doing everything in their power to help, along with some “outside the box” thinking.
Photo: Jewel Samad via Getty Images.
