Indonesia Drops Death Sentence for Australian Drug Smuggler

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - Indonesia’s Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence for convicted Australian heroin smuggler Scott Anthony Rush, giving him life imprisonment instead, a defence lawyer said on Wednesday.

The decision on 25-year-old Rush, after a final legal appeal to Indonesia’s courts, was a rare one as drug smugglers normally get capital punishment under Indonesian law.

“Our next move is to seek ways so that (Rush) can serve the rest of his sentence in Australia,” lawyer Frans Hendra Winata said.

Rush was caught in his teens in 2005 with heroin draped around his body in an airport on the resort island of Bali. Rush was one of the “Bali Nine”, a media term for nine Australians arrested in Bali in a botched attempt to smuggle more than eight kg (17.6 pounds) of heroin into Australia.

Sentences for the nine members have varied from 15 years in jail to death. The judges said Rush’s role was only as a courier, and not as the mastermind behind the smuggling, and he therefore should not be given the death sentence, Kompas newspaper reported.