Fellow prison inmates offer to die in place of Andrew Chan

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Fellow prison inmates offer to die in place of Andrew Chan

By Jewel Topsfield
Updated

A sick prisoner whom Andrew Chan cradled in his arms minutes after learning he had lost his clemency plea has offered to die in the place of the man once described as the godfather of the Bali Nine.

In a heartfelt letter to the Indonesian president, 32-year-old inmate Rico Richardo said Chan had helped him when he almost died inside Bali's Kerobokan prison on January 23.

Sentenced to death: Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Sentenced to death: Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.Credit: Anta Kesuma

"It was Andrew Chan who insisted I got taken back to hospital," Richardo wrote. He said he did not have enough money to pay the hospital bill but Chan asked his lawyer to assist.

Richardo said when it came to Chan the president was "seeing with just one eye". "Even though Andrew Chan is on death row … he never thinks of himself. This could be taken into consideration of your conscience, honorable Mr President," Richardo wrote.

Desperate plea: Matius Arif, an evangelist from Abbalove Church, outside Kerobokan prison with the letter from Chan and Sukumaran.

Desperate plea: Matius Arif, an evangelist from Abbalove Church, outside Kerobokan prison with the letter from Chan and Sukumaran. Credit: Jewel Topsfield

"If you still insist on executing Andrew Chan, I, Rico Richardo, an Indonesian citizen, am ready to take his place and be executed."

Another prisoner, Martin Jamanuna, also wrote he was willing to switch places.

Chan and fellow Bali Nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran on Thursday scrawled a desperate letter to the Indonesian government begging for a moratorium on their death sentence.

The previous day the Denpasar District Court had thrown out an application for a second judicial review into their case..

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Chan and Sukumaran - who were sentenced to death over a foiled plot to export 8.2kg of heroin out of Indonesia in 2005 - could face a firing squad within two weeks.

They are among 11 felons on death row whose clemency pleas have been rejected by Mr Joko, eight of whom convicted narcotics offences.

Attorney-General H.M. Prasetyo said preparations for the executions were taking time because they were incarcerated at different jails across Indonesia.

"First we have to gather them and prior to that there should be notification to the ambassadors, to the families, coordination with the police, health office, religious office, we also have to provide the religious figures, we have to prepare everything," he said.

Asked if the executions would be held this month, Mr Prasetyo said: "We are looking for the right time. This is not a simple matter, it relates to someones lives."

Richardo's letter was one of nine passionate missives from fellow inmates at Kerobokan prison begging the president to spare the men's lives.

Australian lawyer Julian McMahon visited the prison on January 23, the day Chan learned he had lost his clemency plea.

He became alarmed when Chan went missing but discovered him cradling Richardo, whose arm was paralysed.

"It's a measure of the man that he managed to do that having just been told his execution would go ahead with Myuran," Mr McMahon said at the time.

In another letter, Stefanus Mehang, who has been at Kerobokan jail for more than two years, said Chan and Sukumaran were "down to earth ... simple and extraordinary".

"Almost everyday we learn together, share the bible, we sometimes learn to cook from Andrew," Mehang said.

"Apart from their mistake they did in the past, they are just like us, just a human being. Therefore I beg forgiveness for both of them."

The letters were gathered by a friend of Chan's and given to the media via his lawyer, with the permission of the prisoners.

Meanwhile, doubts have been raised about the validity of the "emergency drug crisis" used by Mr Joko and other members of the Indonesian government to justify the death penalty for narcotics offences.

Mr Joko said 40 to 50 people die every day in Indonesia as a result of drugs and 4.5 million addicts need to be rehabilitated.

However Claudia Stoicescu, a PhD candidate at Oxford University, said the figures quoted by the president and parroted by national officials and media outlets were based on studies with questionable methods and vague measures.

"Government advisers cherry-picked the figures to lend credibility to a "national emergency" and ultimately justify an ineffective but politically convenient policy," she wrote in news and commentary website The Conversation.

With Amilia Rosa and Karuni Rompies

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