AUSTRALIA. AUSTRALIA ASKED INDONESIA TO SPARE BALI NINE DEATH PENALTY – FOREIGN MINISTER

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Australia's parliament he wrote to the Indonesian government asking that the death sentence not be imposed on the "Bali Nine" heroin smugglers. Downer said: "Mr Speaker, on 18 December last year I wrote to the Indonesian attorney-general reminding him that the Australian government was opposed to the death sentence and we didn't want to see, in the context of the Bali Nine, any of the Australians sentenced to death."