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JAKARTA: Five Australians held for more than nine months for illegally landing in Indonesia in a small plane returned home, their lawyer has said.
The so-called "Merauke Five" flew from the city of Merauke after the Attorney General's Office removed the last legal impediment to them flying back to Australia, lawyer Efrem Fangoihoy told AFP.
"They left at 7:42 am (2242 GMT Tuesday)... the final clearance letter was received by the authorities in Papua yesterday afternoon," Fangoihoy said.
"They are just happy to be out of here. They wanted to get out of this land as quickly as possible."
The Australians -- pilot William Scott-Bloxam and his wife, Vera, plus Hubert Hofer, Karen Burke and Keith Ronald Mortimer -- had flown to Papua from Horn island off northeastern Australia on a sightseeing trip in September.
The five were initially sentenced to up to three years jail, but had their convictions overturned in a March appeal to the high court and beat off a later appeal by prosecutors to reimpose their conviction.
They had not obtained visas or permission to fly through Indonesian airspace but were told by air traffic controllers in Merauke they were clear to land in the town.
The Australians were briefly held in prison after their initial convictions but have spent most of the past nine months in hotels and houses in Marauke.
Fangoihoy had said the Australians had hoped to return home last week but had been held up by paperwork.
Papua, on the western end of New Guinea island, is the scene of low-level insurgency by separatists fighting for independence from Indonesia.
Foreign journalists are restricted from entering the province, where military and police are frequently accused of rights abuses.
- AFP/yt
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