BREAKING NEWS: Bali Nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran to be moved from Bali jail for their executions
Momock Bambang Samiarso, head of Bali Provincial Prosecutor's Office, said a meeting on Thursday afternoon confirmed the Australians would be executed outside Bali, but he would not say where.
'On the timing, there will be another meeting,' he told reporters. 'But we ask it to be as soon as possible.A meeting on Friday will confirm the date of their transfer.
Prosecutors are trying to keep the transfer a secret, and the official avoided confirming the men would be taken to Nusakambangan, a prison island off central Java.
Mr Momock also promised to give Chan, Sukumaran and their families the required 72 hours notice of their executions.
In a chilling comment, he said the families of the condemned pair would be notified about the imminent transfer ‘so they can visit them for the last time.’
Chan and Sukumaran were leaders of the so-called Bali Nine, who were found guilty of attempting to smuggle more than 8 kg of heroin valued at about A$4 million from Indonesia to Australia.
They were arrested at Bali's Denpasar airport in 2005 and their case has taken on enormous resonance as a domestic political issue in Australia.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that it understood officials have been speaking to airport authorities and Garuda - the national carrier - which has apparently agreed to fly the men to a place where the executions will take place.
Three days before the firing squad’s guns will be unleashed, Mr Muhammad Prasetyo, the Indonesian attorney general, will issue a statement confirming the executions are going ahead.
Condemned prisoners are usually given three days notice of their execution, so it is possible that Chan and Sukumaran will be shot at the weekend.
But they are understood to have been shocked to learn that they will be transferred to the ‘execution island’ very soon.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who was elected last year, has made it clear he will show no mercy to drug smugglers who he says are crowding out the prison system.
He has rejected more than 60 bids for clemency, with a number of other pleas yet to come across his desk.Australia stepped up pressure on Indonesia Thursday to spare the lives of two drug smugglers facing the firing squad, with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warning their execution would be a grave injustice.
'Our shared hope is the Indonesian government and its people will show mercy to Andrew and Myuran,' said Bishop.Both men are deeply, sincerely remorseful for their actions. Both men have made extraordinary efforts to rehabilitate. Andrew and Myuran are the model of what penal systems the world over long to achieve.'
This has taken place despite the Deputy leader of the Opposition in Australia earlier making a passionate plea for the lives of the Bali Nine ringleaders on death row in Indonesia to be spared by highlighting her own husband's drug reform story.
Tanya Plibersek's husband Michael Coutts-Trotter was convicted of conspiracy to import drugs in 1986, at the age of 21, and served three years of a nine-year prison sentence.
He has turned his life around and is now Secretary of the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services.
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