Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are not simply the victims of their own crimes and a sadly corrupted judicial process. In a tragic way, they are so much less than that: pawns surrendered for ostensibly greater things. Now that it is done, we can admit the truth we were suppressing – that they never stood a chance. All the videos and the vigils, all the diplomacy and the lobbying, were never going to conjure a miracle. Their lives stood at the intersection of a suite of circumstances that had ordained a course for them. And perhaps most gallingly, those circumstances had nothing to do with them. Their deaths are simply the debris.

It begins with their arrest, and a thing called the Treaty of Mutual Assistance on Criminal Matters. Chances are Chan and Sukumaran had never heard of this, but – their own catastrophic decision to traffic heroin aside – it might just be the single biggest reason they are now dead. That treaty requires our police to help their Indonesian counterparts with criminal investigations; to locate and identify potential criminals. And it's under these arrangements that the AFP decided to tell the Indonesians about the Bali nine's trafficking plans.

They did it in writing in the most explicit terms: "should they suspect that Chan and/or the couriers are in possession of drugs at the time of their departure (from Indonesia, they should) take what action they deem appropriate". Then they wrote another letter telling the Indonesians the dates and times of their flights home to Australia, advising them to make their arrests on that day. And so the Indonesians did what they deemed appropriate. Ultimately, as it turned out, that involved a bullet through the heart.