Kathy Marks: Death by 1000 political cuts

Andrew Chan holds Myuran Sukumaran in a holding cell at the Denpasar Courthouse before their respective sentencing trials at Denpasar Court on February 14, 2006. Photo / Getty Images

Australian prisoners in long line for Indonesian firing squad unlikely to win reprieve

Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are, by all accounts, model prisoners.

Sukumaran, who under the tutelage of the Australian artist Ben Quilty has become an accomplished painter, runs art and computer classes for fellow inmates of Bali's Kerobokan jail. He has established an organic garden. Chan, who has found God, leads church services. Both men counsel other prisoners on the dangers of drugs.

None of that, though, is likely to save the ringleaders of the so-called Bali Nine heroin smuggling operation from the firing squads which executed six drug offenders, including five foreigners, last weekend.

Sukumaran's plea for clemency has been rejected by Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who declared on Sunday that "a healthy Indonesia is an Indonesia without drugs". He seems certain to turn down a similar plea by Chan, despite lobbying by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and senior ministers.

Barring last-minute judicial reviews, which may not even be allowed to proceed, Sukumaran, 33, and Chan, 31, are set to become the first Australians executed overseas since Van Tuong Nguyen went to the gallows in Singapore in 2005.

Leaving aside wider debates about the death penalty and human rights, one of the intolerable things about their plight is that they are victims not only of their own youthful folly but of politics in Indonesia and at home.

Were it not for the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the pair could be serving lengthy sentences in an Australian jail - not an attractive prospect, but far better than their present situation. Fearing his son, Scott Rush, was planning to act as a drug courier, Lee Rush tipped the AFP off in April 2005 that he was about to travel to Indonesia. Rush says he was assured his son would be intercepted at Brisbane airport.

However, rather than stop the 19-year-old boarding a plane, the then AFP Commissioner, Mick Keelty, passed the information to his Indonesian counterparts. Nine days later, Scott Rush and three other Australians were arrested in Bali as they prepared to fly home with nearly 8kg of heroin.

While Keelty has defended his actions, saying there was not enough evidence to make arrests before the smugglers flew to Indonesia, he must have known he was delivering Rush and others to a potential death sentence - something Australia theoretically abhors. (In 2011, after five years on death row, Rush had his sentence commuted to life in prison). In Indonesia, meanwhile, Widodo's predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, left convicted drug offenders - including some of the Bali Nine - in limbo, reluctant to execute them but afraid of a backlash if he spared their lives.

By the time he left office last October, there were 64 drug offenders on death row. There are now 58. Widodo, not so squeamish and keen to stamp his authority on a country where there is wide support for the death sentence for drug offences, has indicated that none will be spared. Reformed characters or not, Sukumaran and Chan could be in the second batch.