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Mother of Bali Nine ringleader makes plea

The mother of the Bali Nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran has spoken on SBS to ask the Indonesian president to give her son a "second chance".

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Source: AAP, SBS


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The mother of the Bali Nine ringleader Myuran Sukumaran has asked the Indonesian president to give her son a "second chance".

The Indonesian Supreme Court this month rejected Sukumaran's final appeal against his death sentence for his part in the 2005 plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia.

Sukumaran was the last of the Bali Nine with an appeal pending, and like fellow member Andrew Chan, must now rely on clemency from Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono if he is to avoid a firing squad.

"President please, please give my son a second chance," Rajini Sukumaran told SBS's Dateline last night.

Reporter Mark Davis followed Ms Sukumaran as she travelled to Bali to see her son for the first time since his appeal was rejected.

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Ms Sukumaran said she hopes he will get a second chance.

"He has done a lot of good things in the prison to help a lot of people inside, and I'd ask the president to give him a second chance," she said.

Family's shock

Ms Sukumaran said she felt shocked when her son's appeal was denied.

"Myuran's doing well in the prison and we thought everything was going to be alright.

"I feel like something has been taken off me. I feel really lost. I don't know what to think anymore."

Sukumaran's sister Brintha said she doesn't think Australians understand what her brother is facing.

"I think because of the way it's been played out in the media, it's almost like, just a story, an ongoing story and it's never really going to end because something's always happening," she told Dateline.

"I don't think they realise that it might actually end one day, and that will be him being executed."

Last night's story followed Mark Davis's interviews with Sukumaran and Chan in prison last year, where they talked exclusively to Dateline about facing the death penalty.


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