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An inner-Sydney council will plead with Indonesia to spare the Bali bombers less than a month before their scheduled execution.
News Limited newspapers say the left-leaning Marrickville council will write to Indonesia's government this month asking it to commute death sentences imposed on three convicted Bali bombers, whose final appeals officially failed last week, leaving them just 30 days to seek last-minute presidential clemency.
The council will also ask Indonesia to spare six Australian members of the Bali Nine, sentenced to death by firing squad for trying to smuggle 8.3 kg of heroin from Indonesia to Australia.
The move follows Amnesty International Australia's recent controversial bid to save the Bali bombers. To defend its position, the organisation cited its universal opposition to capital punishment.
In a motion passed at its last meeting, by four votes to three, with five Labor councillors abstaining, Marrickville Council resolved to urge Indonesia's participation in a UN moratorium on executions.
Greens councillor Colin Hesse, who proposed the motion, said he did not do so out of sympathy for the Bali bombers, whose attack killed 202 people.
"I'm against the death penalty and, in that sense, I'm in line with every mainstream political party in Australia," News Limited quoted Mr Hesse as saying.
"There's no doubt in my mind that we have to be consistent - if we don't urge them to commute the sentences of the Bali bombers then the Bali Nine will meet their deaths, as well."
Marrickville's stand aligns it with human-rights groups and the Catholic Church, which also called for an end to the death penalty last week, including for terrorists like the Bali bombers.
However, it angered survivors of the 2002 attacks, who are hoping a definitive conclusion to the drawn-out legal process will finally bring peace to families of the dead.
Coogee Dolphins Rugby League Club secretary Mal Ward, who lost six friends in the attack, said Marrickville councillors should stick to local government.
"Obviously, these people haven't lost a brother or a child - obviously they haven't been affected by it because they wouldn't be doing it if they had."
Fellow Coogee Dolphin Erik de Haart said he accepted the council's right to express a view but questioned whether Indonesia's prison system would ever truly punish the bombers. "If they get life sentences instead, how long are they going to stay in jail? I think the only way we are going to get justice is if these guys get killed," he said.
- AAP
