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Indonesia prosecutors want up to 18 years for US couple

Prosecution says asked for lenient sentences due to girlfriend expressing remorse, being new mother.

31.03.2015 - Update : 31.03.2015
Indonesia prosecutors want up to 18 years for US couple

By Ainur Rohmah

JAKARTA 

Indonesian prosecutors have sought prison sentences of at least 15 years for an American woman and her boyfriend who stand accused of killing the woman’s mother on the holiday island of Bali.

Public prosecutors charged the couple with premeditated murder in separate trials Tuesday, requesting sentences of 15 years for Heather Louis Mack, 19, and 19 years for Tommy Schaefer, 21.

They appeared at the Denpasar State Court with their two-week-old daughter who was born while Mack was in custody.

Prosecutor Eddy Artha Wijaya read out the charges, which he said they had decided to reduce due to Mack expressing remorse and being a new mother.

"The defendant has conducted sadistic crimes, and committed [violence] against her own mother," he was quoted by the Kompas news website as saying. "The defendant pleads guilty and currently has a newborn."

The maximum penalty for premeditated murder in Indonesia is execution by firing squad.

The judges granted the defense lawyers one week to prepare to present their case.

The prosecution had been scheduled to present their demands last week but the hearing was adjourned as the couple’s newborn was suffering from jaundice. 

Mack told reporters Tuesday that she had made friends in prison who were helping care for her daughter.

"I feel comfortable. I have a lot of friends [in the prison]," she said, according to Kompas.

Mack and Schaefer are standing trial over the murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack, 62, whose badly beaten body was found in a suitcase in the boot of a taxi outside a hotel in August last year.

Earlier this month, Mack had told the court that her boyfriend had killed von Wiese-Mack with a metal bowl out of anger after she threatened to kill their unborn child. She said she had not wished for the death of her mother.

According to the prosecution, the couple plotted to murder von Wiese-Mack because she did not approve of their relationship and Mack had suggested Schaefer should hire someone to kill her mother.

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