Lawyers, prison staff and family of convicted drug traffickers Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31, say they are changed men.

Both are from Sydney and have been on death row since 2006 for their parts in the so-called Bali Nine’s attempt to traffic more than eight kilograms of heroin to Australia in April 2005.

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Police claimed the heroin haul was worth millions of dollars.

The men were arrested along with seven other young Australians after an Australian Federal Police tip-off under former chief Mick Keelty.

The other seven members of the Bali Nine group were sentenced to between 20 years and life behind bars.

While in prison the men have set up a drug rehabilitation program and run art and computer classes.

Chan grew up in Enfield in Sydney’s south-west and attended Homebush Boys High School.

Although he and Sukumaran, who lived at Auburn, attended the same school they did not meet until years later.

Chan had worked as a part-time cook before his arrest and his parents had owned a restaurant before they retired.

In 2011, Chan’s brother Michael said his family was struggling to come to terms with the court’s death sentence decision.

The Australian pair are facing death by firing squad. Photo: AAP

“Each day is harder to see the pain and anguish they [his parents] suffer knowing their son is facing execution,” he said.

Raji Sukumaran, Myuran’s mother, recently told News Limited her son was not a bad person.

“My son is so young, he is loving and caring and rehabilitating and they want to take him out and kill him, it’s not fair,” she said.

Ms Sukumaran said her son had set up computer, English, graphic design courses, philosophy and psychology courses, art classes and an art gallery which auctioned prisoner art.

Long battle against death sentence

During the past decade the Australian Government made several approaches to Indonesia about the men’s futures.

The inmates even had the support of an Indonesian prison chief during a court hearing in 2010, who said they had contributed to prison life by holding computer and art lessons and should not be executed.

“They are still young. They deserve to be given time to fix their past behaviour. I personally cannot accept it if they are executed,” the head of Kerobokan prison, Siswanto, said.

During a court hearing that year the men asked for forgiveness and a second chance at life.

“I did not think about the impact, I did not know any drug addicts and I never thought seriously about the consequences of my actions,” Sukumaran said.

“From the bottom of my heart I can honestly say I am now a different person and a reformed person.”

Chan revealed during that hearing he had been studying for a bachelor’s degree in theology while in prison and hoped to become a minister or a counsellor.

In 2011, Sukumaran and Chan lost their final legal appeals and asked then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for a clemency pardon.

Their lawyer Julian McMahon said at the time they were far from being the worst of the worst offenders.

“These two have completely rehabilitated themselves and are now in the process of educating and helping a lot of other prisoners get their lives in order,” he said.

Both received a one-year reprieve from facing the firing squad in 2012 as the country dealt with the backlog of executions after a four-year reprieve.

Pair express remorse for crimes

In 2013, the ABC reported the men had established a drug rehabilitation program at the Kerobokan Prison.

In an interview that year, Chan described the moment he feared most – the minutes before facing the firing squad.

“Once you’re taken out of your cell, they take you to a pretty remote area and from there they just line you up and kind of just shoot at your heart,” Chan said.

Sukumaran expressed his remorse for his involvement in the heroin smuggling operation.

“Being responsible for all this, you know like ruining how many people’s lives, and their family’s lives, and putting them in … like this endless situation that seems like there’s no way out of,” he said.