Indonesian court commutes death sentences for Australian drug smugglers
The Associated Press,
Indonesia's highest court has commuted death sentences to life imprisonment for three convicted Australian drug traffickers, their lawyer said Thursday.
Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen were among nine Australians arrested in 2005 on the resort island of Bali after being caught with 8.2 kilograms (18 pounds) of heroin.
"Their sentences were downgraded to life imprisonment," said defense attorney Erwin Siregar. The court's reasoning for the reduction was not made public.
The three were sentenced in 2006 to life imprisonment by the Denpasar District Court, but on a later appeal the Supreme Court upgraded the sentences to death.
Three other Australians in the group, known as the "Bali Nine," were sentenced to death, while two were given life imprisonment. A woman in the group received a 20-year sentence.
Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to death in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim and socially conservative nation of 235 million people, and foreigners have not been exempt.
At the end of 2007, about 140 people were on death row, including more than 40 foreigners, most of them for drug-related crimes. (***)
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