Fury at Aussie role in Bali Nine case

CANBERRA - The trials of the alleged "Bali Nine" heroin smugglers begin in Denpasar today as a row gathers pace over the role of Australian police in helping a probe that could end in firing squads.

The nine were arrested in Bali in April after four "mules" were found with more than 8kg of drugs strapped to their bodies at Denpasar airport as they prepared to fly to Sydney.

But papers presented to the Federal Court in Darwin claim the father of one of the accused, 19-year-old Scott Rush, had told Australian Federal Police of his son's intentions before he entered Indonesia in a bid to prevent his involvement in a crime punishable by death.

The papers follow widespread criticism of Australian help provided for an investigation of a crime likely to involve execution, in contravention of official Australian policy.

Indonesian prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty for all nine accused.

They say evidence not only links them all to the alleged heroin shipment, but also ties several to two earlier smuggling conspiracies through Bali.

In the papers handed to the Federal Court, Lee Rush claims police gave assurances through his lawyer that Scott would be warned he was under surveillance.

The papers say that despite these assurances, no approach was made to Scott Rush before he flew to Bali.

Rush and another alleged mule, Renae Lawrence, 27, are suing the AFP for the denial of judicial fairness and for what they allege was its illegal conduct in providing assistance to the Indonesian police.

The Government has consistently defended the AFP's involvement.

In a statement, the AFP said it had acted appropriately at all times and in accordance with policy.

The AFP said that it had not known of contact made by Rush's family to a Queensland police officer until after the Indonesian investigation had begun.

"Under the formal agreements and guidelines in place, the AFP can provide assistance to foreign countries on a police-to-police basis where no charges have been laid, regardless of whether the foreign country may investigate offences that attract the death penalty," the statement said.

The AFP also defended its co-operation with other countries, including those using the death penalty, pointing to a number of major drug busts in the past 12 months and to the creation of a heroin shortage "unique to Australia".

"If Australia was only to work co-operatively with countries that have identical judicial systems to ours, the AFP would not be able to effectively combat transnational crimes such as drug trafficking, people smuggling, terrorism and child sex tourism," the statement said.

Given the 20-year sentence imposed on Queensland beauty therapist Schappelle Corby for importing cannabis into Bali, observers believe there is little hope of the Bali Nine escaping firing squads if convicted.

Rush, Lawrence, Michael Czugaj, 19, and Martin Stephens, 29, were arrested with heroin strapped to their bodies.

Another man, Andrew Chan, 21, was removed from another flight to Sydney and four others - Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen, 27, Myuran Sukumaran, 24, Si Yi Chen, 20, and Matthew Norman, 18 - were arrested at a hotel, allegedly in possession of narcotics.

Yesterday The Australian reported court papers claimed Indonesian police had forensic evidence linking the drugs taken from the mules to those found at the hotel, enabling conspiracy charges carrying the death sentence.

More ominously for the accused, Brisbane's Courier-Mail said police evidence would also claim Chan, Sukumaran and Lawrence had smuggled an earlier shipment of heroin to Sydney in October last year, and Chan, Lawrence, Norman and another five people had planned, then aborted, a further shipment in December.