Bali: Four of the Bali Nine are confronting months of uncertainty as Indonesian authorities delay indefinitely a decision on the drug smugglers’ applications to reduce their life sentences.

The four, all of whom are serving life terms without a release date, have applied three times to have their sentences cut to 20 years. But they have been told recently that the Indonesian corrections office may not make a decision until next August because of a “backlog of applications”.

One of the four, Martin Stephens, told Fairfax Media he would be “upset if the bad relations between Australia and Indonesia was affecting my case”.

Stephens, Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen all applied last May for the sentence reduction which, in the Indonesian system, is usually a straightforward process. Prison authorities at both the Kerobokan prison and provincial bureaucrats in Bali found in their favour, but the four were disappointed last August when they were not granted the reduction.

There was no explanation at the time, and they have been waiting since then for concrete news. The Australian consulate has recently told them that the application had not been rejected, but that the corrections office had been “overwhelmed by applications and had not got around to processing them”.

The decision is likely to be made next August - a year after the four had expected it - with no certainty that the sentence reduction would be granted.

The Bali Nine were convicted in 2005 of attempting to traffic 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia. Two of them, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, still face death sentences and have appealed to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for clemency.

There is fear that the current bad state of the relationship between Australia and Indonesia may also affect the death row clemency applications.

The others Bali Nine members are also serving life. Michael Czugaj is appealing his sentence, and Scott Rush has exhausted his appeals, and has not yet lodged a bid for sentence remission.

Source: Brisbane Times, December 18, 2013