In what may be a glimmer of hope for the Bali Nine ringleaders, two Iranians convicted of drug offences in Indonesia have had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment on appeal.
Mustofa Moradalivand and Sayed Hashem were sentenced to death by Bandung district court in West Java in January after they were caught in February 2014 trying to pick up a delivery of 40 kilos of methamphetamine.
Slamet Pribadi, a spokesman for the National Narcotics Agency, said he regretted the new sentences at a time when the Indonesian government is taking a tough stance by executing drug offenders on death row.
"We didn't want to intervene with the judicial process, but we expected the appeal of this case would corroborate the initial court verdict," Pribadi was quoted as saying by news website detik.com.
Along with Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, a Brazilian, a Nigerian, a Ghanaian, a French national and a Filipino are all set to be executed for drug convictions following a first batch of executions by Indonesia in January.
