Mercy must be part of every justice system, Tony Abbott said, as he renewed calls for Indonesia to spare the lives of two Australians sentenced to death for drug offences.



The Australian prime minister said Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan had displayed genuine remorse and he hoped the Indonesian government took account of their rehabilitation.

Sukumaran’s plea for clemency was rejected last month but the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, is yet to make a final decision on Chan’s request. Jakarta has taken a hardline stance against drug offenders and indicated that if Chan’s appeal was rejected the two men would be executed together.

In an interview on Tuesday, Abbott said he and the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, had made “strong representations” on behalf of Sukumaran and Chan, and still hoped the Indonesian government would change its mind.

“We don’t believe in the death penalty, we don’t believe in the death penalty here, we don’t believe in the death penalty abroad, if any Australians are subject to it we do what we can to avert that,” the prime minister told the Sydney radio station WSFM.

“But in the end Indonesia, while it is a good and close friend of Australia, it is a sovereign country, they do have their own judicial system.

“I hope that the evidence of genuine remorse, of genuine rehabilitation means that, even at this late stage, the plea for clemency might be accepted because in the end mercy has to be a part of every justice system including the Indonesian one.”

Dutch and Brazilian citizens were among six people killed by firing squad in Indonesia on Sunday.

Asked whether Australia would follow the Dutch and Brazilian governments in recalling ambassadors if the executions went ahead, Abbott said: “My job is to try to stop the executions going ahead and I don’t want to pre-empt what may or may not happen afterwards. As I said, I think these two are well and truly reformed characters and I hope that the Indonesians will accept that and acknowledge and act appropriately.”

At a later media conference in Sydney, Abbott said he had personally raised the issue with the Indonesian president but he was “not going to go into the detail of who said what to whom and when”. Labor has supported the efforts to seek clemency.

Sukumaran and Chan, members of the so-called Bali Nine group, were sentenced to death over a 2005 plot to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia.