Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin says he cannot guarantee that Australians caught smuggling drugs in countries with the death penalty will not suffer the same fate as Bali nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
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At a media conference to answer questions about the federal police's involvement in the arrests of the Bali nine as they attempted to smuggle drugs out of Indonesia, Mr Colvin said police were not in a position to arrest any of the Bali nine members before they left Australia in April 2005.
"At the time we were working with a very incomplete picture. We didn't know everybody involved, we didn't know all the plans, or even what the illicit commodity was likely to be," he said.
"We were not in a position to arrest any of the members of the Bali nine prior to their departure from Australia."
The AFP has declined to discuss its role in alerting Indonesian authorities to the group in detail until now, on the grounds that it could have jeopardised efforts to secure clemency for Chan and Sukumaran.
Days after the executions of the two Australians, Mr Colvin said he could not give an assurance that in the future other Australians will not be executed for drug offences based on information police pass on to authorities in other countries.
"On the key question of could this happen again, I wish I could assure you that this scenario could never happen again. But I cannot," he said.
He said while the AFP's guidelines for how it dealt with death penalty scenarios had changed significantly since 2005 and were now "tightly managed", the organisation could not predict where an investigation might lead as no two scenarios were the same.
"The reality is, and this is important, while ever Australians choose to travel overseas and participate in serious crimes especially drug trafficking and transnational crime that possibility still remains," he said.
"The Bali nine is a tragic reminder of the risks associated with Australians who travel overseas to participate in drug trafficking and other serious crimes.
"If there is to be a message out of these executions that we saw last week ... I sincerely hope it is that other young lives are saved by people thinking twice before participating in serious crimes overseas."
Mr Colvin said it was "not necessarily my intention to convince the public to agree with the decisions that we made in 2005" but dismissed suggestions there had been any wrongdoing by the AFP.
He said the organisation had at all times since the arrests been accountable and transparent and he dismissed "misreporting" that the investigation commenced because of a tip-off from relatives of Bali nine drug mule Scott Rush in 2005.
"I'd also like to address some of the misreporting that this investigation commenced as a result of a tip-off from a concerned father in 2005," he said.
"It simply did not."
He said the AFP had already commenced an investigation of what it believed was a syndicate set up to import drugs to Australia before Rush's father made contact with the AFP.
Because they did not know everyone involved, their plans or what the illegal commodity was likely to be, Commissioner Colvin said the AFP were not in a position to make arrests in Australia.
"At this time AFP consulted and engaged our Indonesian partners and asked for their assistance. It was operationally appropriate and it was consistent with the guidelines as they existed then."
Deputy commissioner Mike Phelan said three travel alerts had been placed on Rush and were triggered when he presented at Customs and Immigration on April 8, 2005.
He said police never gave Rush's family any assurance he would be prevented from leaving Australia.
"The important point to make here is that if Scott Rush's father or his lawyer acting on his behalf had never made contact with the AFP, we would still be in exactly the same position we are today," he said.
"It made absolutely no difference."
Since the guidelines on how to deal with potential death penalty cases were updated in 2009, the AFP has opted not to co-operate in numerous investigations.
In the past three years, the AFP have had 250 requests relating to matters that may involve the death penalty. Of those it had not approved the exchange of information in 15 cases.
When asked if the AFP would have changed anything about the way it conducted the operations, Mr Colvin said he regretted that the Indonesian government had gone through with the executions.
"That was wholly unnecessary," he said.
"And if it's to be believed and reported and we have no reason to think anything differently, Chan and Sukumaran were rehabilitated."
However Mr Colvin said he did not believe the AFP owed the families of the two Australians an apology.
"I don't believe we owe them an apology," he said.
"It's a very difficult question. I mean, we can't apologise for the role that we have to try to stop illicit drugs from coming into this community. We've said many times that illicit drugs are destroying families and our communities."
Earlier in the media conference, Mr Colvin said that some of the public commentary suggesting the AFP had "blood on its hands" in the case was unnecessarily harsh.
"Cartoons depicting the AFP as the firing squad or the Grim Reaper are not only misinformed and ill-guided, they are in my view in very bad taste," he said.
"Police naturally have thick skins. You wouldn't be a police officer if you didn't have a thick skin. But they also have friends and family who read and see those types of headlines, those types of comments and are influenced by them."
Mr Phelan said he agonised over the decision to hand over information to Indonesian police, and has agonised about it since.
"I weighed up a number of things in my mind as to what I thought was appropriate and I've agonised over it for 10 years now," 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 was not easy. "
