Priest wants Bali bombers' spared

High profile Catholic priest Frank Brennan wants the Australian government to speak
out against the execution of the three Bali bombers as it draws nearer.
Brennan said Australia needed to maintain a strong stance against capital punishment
- including for the Bali bombers - or risk confusing the issue.
"We all feel profound sympathy for the victims and the victims' families," Brennan
told a death penalty panel discussion at the Ubud Writers Festival in Bali on
Friday.
"It's no denial of our sympathy to say we have a deep sympathy for you and your
plight, but we still maintain a constant philosophical approach, namely that the
death penalty in all circumstances is wrong."
His comments came as three Islamic militants on death row over the 2002 Bali
bombings were visited by family members as Indonesia prepares to announce details of
their impending executions.
Indonesia's attorney-general on Friday reportedly reiterated the men would be put to
death this year, and he would announce the month next week.
"Information is expensive ... later on the 24th, I will not announce everything,"
Hendarman Supandji said on Indonesia's ElShinta Radio.
Indonesia's Constitutional Court is expected to rule on Tuesday on a side challenge
by the bombers' lawyers, who have argued the country's use of firing squads to carry
out executions amounts to torture.
Defence lawyer Achmad Michdan said Amrozi and Imam Samudra were visited by their
wives, mothers and other relatives at their Nusakambangan Island prison, off Central
Java, on Friday.
He said relatives of Amrozi's brother Mukhlas would visit next week.
The men were convicted of playing key roles in the October 12, 2002, Bali nightclub
bombings which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
Meanwhile, death row Australian drug mule Scott Rush has written a letter read to
the Bali writers' festival, hoping for changes to laws which one day might overturn
his own death sentence.
"I'm not a writer but I am a convicted criminal," the now 22-year-old Rush wrote.
"I have been through some very rough times and have experienced some very long, slow
nights.
"I have had a lot of time to think and I'm very sorry for what I have done and what
I have caused.
"I still hope that one day I can show I'm capable of reform."