The Australian Federal Police are ultimately responsible for the Bali Nine ringleaders being on death row and must join a last-ditch effort to save them, a lawyer says.
Bob Myers, the barrister and family friend who represented Bali Nine member Scott Rush, says the AFP must break a decade of silence to support ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31, from an Indonesian firing squad.
He says the men are only on death row because the AFP tipped off Indonesian police about the 2005 plot to smuggle heroin from Bali to Australia.
The tip-off meant the nine were arrested and prosecuted in Indonesia, where the death penalty applies, instead of being nabbed on their return to Sydney.
"For almost a decade now, the AFP has never acknowledged the part they played," Mr Myers told AAP on Friday.
With Sukumaran and Chan to be executed, possibly within the next fortnight, Mr Myers said the AFP must join Australia's clemency efforts.
He said it must publicly admit its "betrayal" 10 years ago and appeal, through Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to the Indonesian government for the men to be spared.
"The AFP must admit it made a grave error, a complete and utter misjudgment, in doing what we did. None of the Bali Nine would ever have been apprehended in Indonesia if it had not been for the AFP," Mr Myers said.
"The prime minister is quoted this morning as saying he'll leave no stone unturned (to save the men). Well, this is a stone I've been trying to have turned over for 10 years and no one will do it."
In 2006, the Federal Court found the AFP had not technically breached a guideline preventing it co-operating with requests from other countries in cases that could expose Australians to the death penalty.
But Mr Myers argues the AFP was cleared on the basis of a loophole - that the AFP had voluntarily passed information about the Bali Nine to Indonesia, rather than being asked for it.
"It was so close to illegal activity. The AFP must stand up and say this was our fault," he said.
Former AFP commissioner Mick Keelty has previously used international co-operation in the war on drugs as a justification for providing information to Indonesia police.
The AFP has suggested it might be playing a role in Australia's efforts to save the men.
"The AFP is contributing to Australian government efforts in relation to current events," an AFP spokesman said in a statement to AAP.
In the statement, the spokesman said the AFP changed its guidelines for dealing with such cases in January 2009.
It must now consider relevant factors before sharing intelligence that is likely to see an Australian prosecuted for offences that carry the death penalty.
"Ministerial approval is required in any case in which a person has been arrested or detained for, charged with, or convicted of an offence which carries the death penalty," the spokesman said.
The new guidelines also mean the AFP must report to the minister annually on the nature and number of cases in which police assistance is provided in potential death penalty cases.
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