JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The remaining five Australians from the Bali Nine group who are serving life sentences for drug smuggling in Indonesia could be repatriated home this month as Indonesia and Australia put finishing touches on a draft proposal for their transfer, Indonesia's senior law minister said Tuesday.
The Indonesian government is awaiting Australia's response to key points related to the transfer arrangements, including provisions requiring Australia to acknowledge Indonesia’s sovereignty, respect the rulings of Indonesian courts and ensure that the five maintain their prisoner status after returning home, Yusril Ihza Mahendra told reporters.
“I hope that we can find an understanding on that, agreed on the draft. And we hope that we can finalize these matters in December,” Mahendra said after meeting Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in Jakarta.
Burke said the proposal "is a significant step forward and shows significant goodwill. We now need to work through the issues within each country and we’ll we will be doing that without delay.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last month appealed to Indonesia's new President Prabowo Subianto to allow their repatriation.
Two convicted ringleaders of the Bali Nine, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were executed by a firing squad in 2015, causing a diplomatic furor between neighbors Indonesia and Australia. Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died from cancer in prison in May.
The nine were arrested in an attempt to smuggle 8.3 kilograms (18.3 pounds) of heroin from Indonesia’s resort island of Bali to Australia in 2005,
The five are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Renae Lawrence, the only woman in the group, was released and returned to Australia in 2018.
Of the five, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman are held in Bali’s Kerobokan Prison, while the others have been transferred to facilities elsewhere.
For years, they have sought clemency ahead of Indonesia’s Independence Day. Each request has gone unanswered, underscoring the country’s hard line stance on drug offenses.
Last month, Indonesia agreed to repatriate to the Philippines a death-row drug convict who was nearly executed by firing squad but got a reprieve due to years of pleadings from Manila.
Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk, in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, right, speaks Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, listens during a press conference after their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, right, walks with Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, during their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, right, listens to Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, during a press conference after their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, left, shakes hands with Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, during their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's decision to break his word and pardon his son Hunter has spurred a broader discussion about what else he should be doing with the broad clemency powers of the presidency before he leaves office in January, including whether he should even be pardoning Donald Trump.
Biden on Tuesday ducked questions on his decision on his son, ignoring calls for him to explain his reversal as he was making his first presidential trip to Angola.
He dismissed shouted questions about the matter with a laugh during a meeting with Angolan President João Lourenço at the presidential palace, telling the Angolan delegation: “Welcome to America.” Biden was not scheduled to take questions from the press during his trip to Africa, and he has largely avoided interactions with reporters since President-elect Trump’s victory last month.
Biden’s decision to offer his son a blanket pardon for actions over the past 11 years has sparked a political uproar in Washington, after the president repeatedly had said he would not use his extraordinary powers for the benefit of his family. Biden claimed that the Justice Department had presided over a “miscarriage of justice” in prosecuting his son, using some of the same language that Trump uses to describe his own legal predicaments.
Biden's reversal drew criticism from many Democrats, who are working to calibrate their approach to Trump as he prepares to take over the Oval Office in seven weeks. There is concern the pardon — and Biden's claims that his son was prosecuted for political reasons — will erode their ability to push back on the incoming president’s legal moves. And it has threatened to cloud Biden's legacy as he prepares to leave office on Jan. 20.
Hunter Biden is the closest presidential relative ever to be granted clemency, but other leaders have pardoned family members and close friends. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger for drug charges after Roger Clinton had served his sentence. By the time Trump left office after his first term, he had issued 144 pardons, which included Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner. He also pardoned fervent supporters Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and other people convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
In the months after the 2020 election, Trump and his allies were trying to overturn his loss, a failed effort that culminated in the violent riot by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. There were discussions at the time over whether Trump would preemptively pardon some of those involved in the effort — and maybe even himself — before he left office. But that never happened.
Now, Democrats are having similar discussions about preemptive pardons on their side because of Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail. He's made no secret of his desire to seek revenge on those who prosecuted him or crossed him. He talks about "enemies from within." He's circulated social media posts that call for the jailing of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. He's also taken aim at Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who campaigned for Harris, promoting a social media post that suggested he wanted military tribunals to punish her because she was guilty of treason.
Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said last week on Boston Public Radio that Biden might consider broad pardons to protect people against whatever wrath Trump may seek, but also as a way to move the country past this acrimonious and divided time.
“I think that without question, Trump is going to try to act in a dictatorial way, in a fascistic way, in a revengeful first year at least of his administration toward individuals who he believes harmed him,” Markey said.
Presidents enjoy expansive pardon powers when it comes to federal crimes. That includes granting clemency to people who have not yet been charged, as President Gerald Ford did in 1974 when he pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal. The decision at the time caused an uproar but has been seen in the ensuing decades as a move that helped to restore order.
Markey cited Ford's pardon as way for the country “just to close that chapter and move on to a new era.” Biden could do the same, Markey said, to help the country move on “to an agenda that deals with the ordinary families.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat-turned-independent from West Virginia, took it a step further and suggested Biden should even pardon Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal charges that are now evaporating with Trump's upcoming return to the White House.
“Why don't you go ahead and pardon Donald Trump for all his charges?" he asked in an interview with CNN. “It would have gone down a lot more balanced. I'm just saying, wipe them out.”
At the same time, Democratic lawmakers and criminal justice reformers are pushing Biden to grant pardons to broad groups of Americans. Democrats Ayanna Pressley, Jim Clyburn and Mary Gay Scanlon wrote to Biden on Nov. 20, asking him to use his clemency powers to "address longstanding injustices in our legal system, and set our nation on the path toward ending mass incarceration.”
The letter, also signed by 61 others, suggested Biden could use his powers to send a powerful message of criminal justice reform and would "rectify unjust and unnecessary criminal laws passed by Congress and draconian sentences given by judges.”
“We encourage you to use your clemency powers to help broad classes of people and cases, including the elderly and chronically ill, those on death row, people with unjustified sentencing disparities, and women who were punished for defending themselves against their abusers,” they wrote.
So far, Biden has only pardoned 25 people, none with direct ties to him. Most presidents tend to grant a flurry of clemency requests at the end of their terms and it's likely Biden will do likewise. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said Biden is “thinking through that process very thoroughly.”
Weissert reported from Luanda, Angola.
President Joe Biden speaks at the National Museum of Slavery, in the capital Luanda, Angola on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
President Joe Biden speaks at the National Museum of Slavery, in the capital Luanda, Angola on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden walk in downtown Nantucket Mass., Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
President Joe Biden meets with Angola's President Joao Lourenco, at the presidential palace in the capital Luanda, Angola on Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
