By Ainur Rohmah
JAKARTA
A legal challenge by two Australians on death row in Indonesia was adjourned Wednesday until next week after a key witness failed to appear in court.
Leonard Aritonang, a lawyer representing Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, said the witness could not attend the session at the State Administrative Court in capital Jakarta as he was teaching a class.
“The expert witness is from Andalas University," the Kompas news website quoted Aritonang as saying, without providing details or a name.
During the session, lawyers for the pair -- ringleaders of a smuggling ring known as the “Bali Nine” -- were scheduled to present evidence for a final appeal against their clients’ executions.
They were given until Monday to produce the witness.
Chan and Sukumaran are appealing an earlier decision by the court not to hear their case against Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s denial of presidential clemency.
Their lawyers argue that Widodo’s blanket policy of refusal for clemency for drug offenders - Widodo has vowed “no mercy” for all 58 death-row drug convicts - failed in his duty to consider the clemency applications on their individual merits, including their well-documented rehabilitation.
Sonny Abdullah, who chaired the panel of judges Wednesday, said the legal team for the duo had submitted 10 pieces of evidence including laws related to the president’s prerogative.
A lawyer for Preisdent Widodo, however, said the evidence was not appropriate.
"[The evidence] was simply copies of law. Supposedly, [the lawyers] had other evidence," the website quoted Rusdiahadi Teguh as saying.
He also objected to the Australians’ lawyers appearing at the court more than two hours late, and stressed, “we are fighting for time.”
Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 33, were convicted of leading the Bali Nine trafficking gang that attempted to smuggle 8.3 kilograms (18 pounds) of heroin through Indonesia in 2005.
They are among 10 drug convicts -- nine of them foreigners -- facing execution by firing squad.
Included among them in Frenchman Serge Areski Atlaoui, 51, whose appeal was also adjourned Wednesday until April 1, after he failed to appear at a hearing to sign paperwork for his case’s transfer to the Supreme Court.
His lawyer Nancy Yuliana told Metro TV there had been a problem in funding Atlaoui’s transportation cost from Nusa Kambangan prison island, off the south coast of Java, to the Tangerang District Court as his family was facing financial difficulty.
The father-of-four was arrested in 2005 in a laboratory producing ecstasy near Jakarta on drug charges.
Indonesia’s attorney-general office has said that the executions of the drugs convicts will be delayed as their lawyers continue exploring available legal avenues.
