I

ndonesia rejected on Thursday an Australian proposal for a prisoner swap that Canberra made in an apparent attempt to save the lives of two Australian drug traffickers who are on death row.

Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said she had told her Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop, that Indonesia has no legal framework that would allow such a scheme.

Australian media outlets reported earlier on Thursday that during a phone call on Tuesday evening between Bishop and Retno, the former proposed the prison swap deal and asked whether it was possible under Indonesian law.

Bishop was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that she would exhaust every option to save the two Australian citizens.

'€œWhat we are seeking to do is have an opportunity to talk about options that might be available in the area of prisoner transfer or prisoner swap,'€ she said in Canberra.

The Foreign Ministry said Indonesia could not entertain Australia'€™s proposal.

'€œIndonesia has no regulation or other legal framework related to a prisoner exchange. This was conveyed by the Indonesian foreign minister in her response to the proposal of the Australian foreign minister while the two were involved in the telephone conversation,'€ Foreign Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the two Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were transferred from Kerobokan prison on Bali to the Nusakambangan prison island in Central Java, where the executions are expected to take place.

Cabinet Secretary Andi Widjajanto confirmed that Retno briefed Jokowi on Thursday morning regarding Bishop'€™s proposal.

Later on Thursday, during the celebration of Chinese New Year in Bogor, West Java, President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo reiterated his stance on executing drug traffickers.

'€œIndonesia wants to maintain its good relations with all countries, wants to have friendly relations with all countries, but, one more time, [our] legal sovereignty remains our legal sovereignty. Our political sovereignty remains our political sovereignty,'€ he said.

A number of top officials, including Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna H. Laoly and Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno, said Indonesia could allow for such a prisoner exchange, but not in narcotics cases.

'€œThere is a good intention behind the idea of a prisoner swap, but not for this [drug] case; this is a different story because this concerns our stern policy of fighting drug trafficking, not to mention that the two were handed down capital punishment,'€ Yasonna said.

International law expert Hikmahanto Juwana urged the government not to accept Bishop'€™s proposal since Indonesia did not recognize the transfer of convicts.

'€œIt won'€™t happen because Indonesia has no legal framework for the transfer of convicts and there is also no bilateral framework for a prisoner swap between Australia and Indonesia,'€ he said.

Yeni Rosa Damayanti of the Association of Healthy Souls called on the government not to execute Brazilian death row convict Rodrigo Gularte as his medical records showed that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in 1996.

'€œThe medical records prove that he was not making up the disorder as insinuated by the attorney general [M. Prasetyo] and they also show that he did not develop the mental disorder after he was sentenced,'€ she said on Thursday.

Local media reported that Prasetyo said he believed that Gularte'€™s family and lawyers only claimed that Gularte was schizophrenic in order to postpone the impending execution. He also repeatedly claimed that the execution procedure written in Law No. 2/1964 stipulated that only children under 18 years old and pregnant women were exempt from the death penalty.

Medical reports obtained by the Post reveal that Gularte attended psychiatric appointments from March to November 1996 at the Clinica Quinta do Sol in Brazil, where he was prescribed antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers.