REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Australia should ensure the security of Indonesian diplomats in the country in the run-up to the execution of two Australian convicts in Indonesia, a professor said.
"The government of Indonesia needs to ask the Australian police force to ensure the security of its diplomats and representative offices in Australia ahead of the execution," Hikmahanto Juwana, a professor of international law at the University of Indonesia, stated here on Wednesday.
Indonesia deploys its police officers at the embassies of friendly countries and the residences of foreign diplomats, he pointed out, adding that Australia should do the same in the wake of the upcoming execution of the Bali Nine pair from Australia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
Juwana affirmed that Australia would be blamed if it failed to guarantee the security of Indonesian diplomats and its consulate offices in the country, in accordance with international law.
The execution of the drug offenders is looming over the horizon as two Australian and a Cordovan death row convicts arrived on Wednesday at Nusakambangan Island in Central Java, where they will soon face a firing squad.
Chan and Sukumaran, members of the Australian Bali Nine who were convicted of trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia in 2005, and Raheem Agbaje Salami of Cordoba, Spain, have been taken to Nusakambangan Island where they are to be executed.
Chan and Sukumaran were moved from Krobokan Prison in Denpasar to Ngurah Rai Airport, from where they were flown to Cilacap in Central Java by a chartered Wings Air flight with registration number ATR-72-600 PK-WGO at 6:50 a.m. local time amid heavy rain.
Escorted by two Sukhois and two F-16 fighter planes, the Wings Air plane that Chan and Sukumaran boarded arrived at Cilacap's Tunggul Wulung Airport at 8:14 a.m. local time.
They were then transferred from the airport, and arrived at the execution island of Nusakambangan under tight security at 8:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
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