AUSTRALIA HAS FORMALLY complained to Indonesia over the treatment of two men facing the firing squad, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, amid reports their execution could be delayed for up to 10 days.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the ringleaders of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug trafficking gang, were moved on Wednesday to the place where they are due to be killed.

Australia was dismayed at the level of security used to transport them from Bali to the so-called “execution island” of Nusakambangan with dozens of armed police on hand, and outraged that photographs emerged from on board the plane.

One picture showed a smiling Denpasar police chief commissioner Djoko Hari Utomo apparently posing for a selfie with his hand on the back of a seated Chan, who was ashen-faced.

Utomo with Myuran Sukumaran

Another showed the commissioner placing his hand on the shoulder of Sukumaran, who was looking up at him.

“I thought they were unbecoming and showed a lack of respect and dignity and we have protested to the Indonesian ambassador here in Canberra,” Abbott told reporters of the pictures that were widely published in Australia.

Treasurer Joe Hockey added that the treatment of the pair had been inappropriate.

“It was incredibly insensitive, it’s almost macabre the way this has been handled by the Indonesian authorities,” he said.

The Australians, in their early 30s, were sentenced to death in 2006 for trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia. They recently lost their appeals for presidential clemency, typically the final chance to avoid the firing squad.

- © AFP, 2015

Read: Australia makes last-ditch effort to save two drug-smugglers from firing squad

Read: Two Australian drug smugglers are to be executed by firing squad