(SomaliNet) Lawyers for the three Islamists facing execution for the Bali bombings which killed 202 people filed a desperate last-minute appeal on Monday to save them from the firing squad. However, prosecutors said the appeal was invalid as the bombers - Amrozi, 47, his brother Mukhlas, 48, and Imam Samudra, 38 - had already exhausted their legal options and must now die in line with their 2003 sentences. "No more appeals can be accepted because the limit is only one," a spokesperson for Indonesia's Attorney General's Office said, even though the bombers have had at least three appeals considered by the Indonesian courts.
Lawyer Imam Asmara Hadi said the appeal filed in Bali's Denpasar district court rested on the bombers' claim they had not been properly informed of the rejection of their previous petition. "We have lodged an appeal because we haven't received a copy of the Supreme Court rejection of our previous appeal," Hadi said.
Police stepped up security around Cilacap port connecting southern Java to the high-security Nusakambangan prison island where the bombers are believed to be just days or even hours away from execution. Heavily armed police extended a no-go zone around the port and barred all traffic to the island in the latest sign that the executions are imminent.
Security has been tightened across the mainly Muslim archipelago due to concerns about revenge attacks from Islamist fanatics and the Jemaah Islamiyah regional terror network, believed to be responsible for the Bali carnage. The bombings of tourist nightspots on the resort island in 2002 killed more than 160 foreigners including 88 Australians, as well as 68 Indonesians.
Nusakambangan prison chief Bambang Winahyo said the bombers appeared to be calm and ready to die, in line with their repeated assertions that they want to be "martyrs" for their cause of creating a Southeast Asian caliphate. "They're in good condition, healthy. It seems they're facing this calmly," he said.
Relatives and lawyers were barred from visiting the bombers at Nusakambangan early on Monday as they did not have permission from Jakarta, officials said.
Ali Fauzi, the younger brother of Amrozi and Mukhlas, blasted the authorities for refusing to let him see the bombers for a last time. He said he would leave Cilacap later on Monday if permission did not arrive within hours. "I'm very disappointed with the Attorney General's Office for not allowing us to go in as my brothers have been put in an isolation room" ahead of their execution, he said. "I want to pass a message from my family to Amrozi and Mukhlas. My mother said for them to be patient, to be sincere and to accept their fate.
"But she also said that if I can bring them home alive and free, then I should bring them home," he added, laughing.
The 2002 Bali attacks were the bloodiest in a sustained period of Al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist violence in mainly moderate Indonesia. Bombings at the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003, the Australian embassy in 2004 and Bali again in 2005, among others, killed scores of people.
Jemaah Islamiyah is still active in plotting attacks across the region and the alleged mastermind of the Bali bombings, Malaysian extremist Noordin Mohammad Top, is still at large.