Australia offers Indonesia a prisoner swap deal ADVERTISING Australia offers Indonesia a prisoner swap deal CANBERRA, Australia — Australia has offered Indonesia a prison swap deal in an 11th hour bid to save the lives of two Australian drug smugglers
Australia offers Indonesia a prisoner swap deal
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia has offered Indonesia a prison swap deal in an 11th hour bid to save the lives of two Australian drug smugglers who have been transferred to an island prison where they are to be killed by firing squad within days.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Thursday she made the proposal to her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi who had agreed to convey it to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. Bishop said she had yet to hear back.
The Australian newspaper reported Bishop had offered to repatriate three convicted Indonesian drug criminals in return for the lives of the Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
The Australians are among nine foreigners who are to be executed soon.
Defense admits Tsarnaev bombed Boston Marathon
BOSTON — The question, for all practical purposes, is no longer whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev took part in the Boston Marathon bombing. It’s whether he deserves to die for it.
In a blunt opening statement at the nation’s biggest terrorism trial in nearly 20 years, Tsarnaev’s own lawyer flatly told a jury that the 21-year-old former college student committed the crime.
“It WAS him,” said defense attorney Judy Clarke, one of the nation’s foremost death-penalty specialists.
But in a strategy aimed at saving Tsarnaev from a death sentence, she argued that he had fallen under the malevolent influence of his now-dead older brother, Tamerlan.
“The evidence will not establish and we will not argue that Tamerlan put a gun to Dzhokhar’s head or that he forced him to join in the plan,” Clarke said, “but you will hear evidence about the kind of influence that this older brother had.”
US won’t bring federal charges in Ferguson shooting
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department cleared a white former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old on Wednesday, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices it called discriminatory and unconstitutional.
The dual reports marked the culmination of months-long federal investigations into a shooting that sparked weeks of protests and a national dialogue on race and law enforcement as the tenure of Attorney General Eric Holder, the first black person to hold that office, draws to a close.
In pairing the announcements, the Obama administration sought to offset community disappointment over the conclusion that the shooting of Michael Brown was legally justified with a message of hope for Ferguson’s majority-black citizens. Officials announced 26 recommendations, including training officers in how to de-escalate confrontations and banning the use of ticketing and arrest quotas.
Holder called the federal report a “searing” portrait of a police department that he said functions as a collection agency for the city, with officers prioritizing revenue from fines over public safety and trouncing the constitutional rights of minorities.
“It is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg,” Holder said.
By wire sources
