A lower court in January jailed them for up to three years.They had flown from Horn island off north-eastern Australia on what they described as a sightseeing trip.'They have all been freed since the high court accepted their appeal on March 5,' lawyer Efrem Fangoihoy told AFP.The court had yet to make its ruling public but the lawyer said he was expecting formal notification later on Tuesday.'The judges accepted our arguments that the pilot decided to land as the tower official gave verbal permission despite the pilot's explanation that they hadn't obtained landing permit documents,' he said.'The conversation between the pilot and the tower official in Merauke's airport had been recorded and we gave a copy to the court.' He said that even if they had not obtained clearance to land, the most the Indonesian authorities could do was deport them for not having visas.
The Australians - pilot William Scott-Bloxam and his wife, Vera, plus Hubert Hufer, Karen Burke and Keith Ronald Mortimer - are expected to leave Papua as soon as they receive formal notice of the court's decision.A low-level separatist insurgency simmers in Papua and the province remains one of the most sensitive areas in the vast Indonesian archipelago.Journalists are banned from visiting Papua without special permission and the military is accused of human rights violations there. -- AFP
Source : The Straittimes
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