article_snippet.sent: Canberra, Australia (CNN)Before "Bali Nine" duo,  Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the last Australian executed for drug offenses abroad was Van Tuong Nguyen by Singapore in 2005.
article_snippet.sent: Those sympathetic to the dilemma faced by Indonesia's President Joko Widodo will argue that Indonesia's President Joko Widodo was politically bound to allow the executions to take place.
article_snippet.sent: As the saga over whether the executions would take place dragged on for months, following ever more desperate legal challenges from the defense teams, Indonesia's President Joko Widodo painted Indonesia's President Joko Widodo into a corner.
article_snippet.sent: While working assiduously behind the scenes to argue for clemency for the "Bali Nine" duo, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott nevertheless appeared to accept the inevitability of the executions, even as Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott publicly reiterated Australia's opposition to capital punishment.
article_snippet.sent: All that changed when credible stories began to emerge about the rehabilitation of the two Australian prisoners: Chan becoming a pastor and respected religious example for Chan fellow prisoners and Sukumaran a passionate painter with impressive talent.
article_snippet.sent: Such was the regard held for the Australian duo that even the governor of the Kerobokan jail where they were kept, Sudjonggo, urged a reconsideration of they impending executions.
article_snippet.sent: As the Australian duo attracted greater public sympathy -- including from a joint statement by the last six prime ministers urging Jakarta to reconsider -- the good, great and popular in Australian society also united behind the plea for mercy.
article_snippet.sent: Under increasing pressure in the polls, the Abbott government began to publicly pursue what the Abbott government had been doing in private: urging a stay of execution on legal and moral grounds -- even once reminding Jakarta of the over $1 billion worth of aid that Indonesia has received from Australia over the past decade.
article_snippet.sent: Credible accusations by the defense attorney for the two Australians that a lighter sentence was denied to the two Australians because of the two Australians incapacity to pay the bribe demanded of the two Australians from the sentencing judges affirmed perceptions of Indonesia's judicial system as corrupt if not incompetent.
article_snippet.sent: Perhaps the final straw was Indonesia's decision to deploy hundreds of commandos and four naval ships to transport the handcuffed prisoners from Bali to the handcuffed prisoners island for execution -- viewed in Australia as a deliberate backhander by Jakarta to Canberra.
article_snippet.sent: The Abbott government had warned of unspecified consequences should the executions take place, and on Wednesday morning announced the unprecedented recall of Australia's Ambassador to Indonesia.
highlights_snippet.sent: Despite pleas for mercy, Indonesia executed eight prisoners on Wednesday .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Included two of the "Bali Nine," convicted drug traffickers from Australia .
  