Oz Police Unapologetic Over Bali 9 Tip-Off

Australian police have refused to apologise for telling Indonesia about the Bali Nine - despite knowing they could face the death penalty.

The nine Australian drug smugglers were arrested on the resort island of Bali in 2005 over their involvement with a syndicate taking drugs to Sydney.

Last week, two members of the so-called Bali Nine - Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran - were killed by a firing squad despite pleas for mercy from Australia.

The seven others are serving lengthy prison sentences in Indonesia.

Since the arrests a decade ago, there has been widespread criticism of the police decision to ask Indonesia for help - knowing the country has the death penalty for drug offences - rather than arrest the mules on their return to Australia.

The commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP), Andrew Colvin, says he regrets the men have been executed but does not believe he owes their families an apology.

"We can't apologise for the role that we have to try to stop illicit drugs from coming into this community," he told an hour-long news conference to explain the AFP's role in the arrests.

Federal Police deputy commissioner Mike Phelan - who gave approval for the information to be given to the Indonesians - says he "agonised for 10 years" over the tip-off.

But he says he was driven by a desire to stop the syndicate.

"To let them come back through to Australia, we may have grabbed a couple of mules, but we would not have been able to have any evidence in relation to the wider syndicate," he said.

Mr Phelan admitted the decision was made with the knowledge that Australians could face the death penalty.

"Yes, I knew full well by handing over the information and requesting surveillance, if they found them in possession of drugs they'd take action and expose them to the death penalty," he said.

"And every time I look back, I still think it's a difficult decision, but given what I knew at that particular time and what our officers knew, I would take a lot of convincing to make a different decision."

It has long been reported that the Australian investigation was originally triggered by a tip-off from the father of Scott Rush, one of the Bali Nine serving a life sentence.

But Mr Colvin has denied this, saying the information given by Rush's family made no difference to the investigation.

"I want to take the pressure off Scott Rush's father," he said.

The commissioner claims police had already been looking into the syndicate, but did not have enough evidence to make any arrests prior to their departure for Indonesia.

"I can assure you that if we had enough information to arrest the Bali Nine before they left Australia, we would've done just that," he said.

Mr Colvin also said the police guidelines on dealing with countries with the death penalty have been strengthened since 2005.

They now require officers to consider the risk of the death penalty at a much earlier stage in investigations.

But he added: "We cannot limit our co-operation just to those countries that have a similar judicial system or similar policies to that of our own."