Bali 9: The Untold Story (25 page)

Tidak tahu
means ‘don’t know’ and
tidak ingat
means ‘don’t remember’. Translators assisting some of the Nine were forced to use the phrases over and over again like broken records.

Take Chan at the beginning of his testimony. Asked if he had ever stayed in the Hard Rock Hotel, he replied, ‘From what I believe, yes.’ But he couldn’t remember how long he had stayed there.

Before Chan started his evidence, the other members of the Nine had already had their say. The four mules all testified about Chan and Sukumaran strapping the heroin onto their bodies and threatening them. Then, while Chan took centre stage, some of the others sat behind him.
Had he ever met the people sitting behind him while he was in Bali?
‘No, I don’t remember.’
Let’s try that again, just try to remember.
‘I have never met ‘em in Australia, no.’ Puzzled looks were exchanged behind his back. He worked with Lawrence, Stephens and Norman. Try again: did he know Renae Lawrence? He didn’t know her, he said he’d only seen her around at work but never talked to her, telling the judges that Eurest was a big company. It was the same for Stephens, he said. He even went so far as to say that he didn’t know Myuran Sukumaran. Only six days earlier Sukumaran had told his own trial, in his defence
evidence, that he had gone to school with Chan. Chan said he had never met Sukumaran in the Hard Rock Hotel. It was a lie, whichever way one looks at it: the surveillance police had photographed the pair together on the hotel steps waiting for a taxi and the photograph was part of the dossier of evidence.

There was one answer that really took the cake. In response to the question ‘Do you know why you sit here [in court]?’ Chan said, ‘Um, no, not really.’ Yes, he said, he had been questioned by police after his arrest, but he had no clue if the statement had ever been typed up. Not only had it been typed but Chan had signed it. And here it was in the brief of evidence. Chan was beckoned to come forward and check for himself. He was starting to sound ridiculous.

Q. As far as you know, all of the witnesses here are liars?

A. From what I believe, yes, from what I’ve heard, yes.

Q. How do you know that they are liars, you don’t even know them? How?

A. Well, no, they are saying that they know me but I don’t know them.

It was at this point that a fuming Judge Supratman, his dark eyes boring into Chan, jumped in to tell Chan that the robed men in front of him were not stupid. With a display like that he certainly couldn’t have done himself any favours.

When it came time for prosecutor Olopan Nainggolan to deliver his sentence demand or request and to sum up the case for the judges, he pulled no punches. He described Chan as being the ‘driving force’ of the Bali Nine operation. A large and jovial man, Mr Nainggolan was happy to later give an analogy—if the Bali Nine were an aircraft, Chan would be the engine. He painted Chan as one of the chief organisers, a financier, a recruiter who dished out the discipline to some of the mules, picked up the heroin twice from the supplier, Cherry Likit Bannakorn, then strapped it to the bodies of the mules. When he got to the part of his demand where prosecutors outlined the mitigating and non-mitigating factors, the list of mitigating factors which could bring Chan some leniency was painfully thin—
tidak ada
. It means ‘nothing’.

Mr Nainggolan said that Chan had failed to cooperate with authorities and had given confusing and convoluted evidence. His crime had damaged the image of Bali and was contrary to Indonesia’s tough stance and anti-drugs regime. No one was surprised when Mr Nainggolan said Chan should be sentenced to death. And as the prosecutor said the words
hukuman mati
(death penalty) Chan didn’t need his translator to tell him what it meant. He already knew.

The flustered translator asked a smirking Chan anyway if he knew what it meant. ‘Yes, death penalty, no problem.’ The Iceman was cool, calm and collected.

T
hey looked like the three minstrels—black pants and white shirts—sitting side by side, day after day, not saying much. They saw no evil and heard no evil. They contended that they were quite simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Melasti group—so-called because they were arrested at the Melasti Beach Bungalows—were, at least in court, not the most charismatic bunch. For the most part their voices were barely audible; they often mumbled whenever they were called upon to speak. It had been the same during police interrogations: they had chosen not to make any concessions or admissions, and refused to testify against any of the others.

Of the group—Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and
Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen—Norman looked the saddest. He appeared almost morbid—his eyes held a certain dullness, a faraway look. His body language was the same. Norman is the youngest of the Bali Nine, only eighteen when they were caught, and his tender years were on display when he fronted court. Perhaps it was the shape of his mouth, but a smile barely ever crossed his lips in public. That was the way it remained throughout the trio’s joint trial.

So at the end, when Norman stood up to address the judges personally, his plea was the surprise of the group. He chose to tell the judges something of himself and the reasons why he disliked drugs so much, and of his newfound faith. Being in jail had not been easy for him; it was hard being away from his family.

‘I don’t do drugs, either do my friends,’ he told the judges. ‘I have seen first-hand what drug effects do to a family. My friend’s mum was a drug addict and it really hurt my friend. One day his mum overdosed and almost died and seeing how hurt my friend was made me—I made a promise to myself that I would not take drugs or be associated with anybody involved or using drugs.

‘Since my arrest I have learnt many things. One of those things I am proud to say I learnt about is the Bible. I was a believer in Jesus Christ but not a dedicated Christian, and now I honestly am. I read the Bible daily and it helps me get through the day…In all honesty I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I ask that you will see towards that decision. I ask you
today to give me the opportunity to restart my new Christian life which I have found being in jail. I ask with all my heart you will let me have that opportunity to help other people in life.’

For the first time Norman had opened up and let people see some of what was in his heart. The other two, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen and Si Yi Chen, did this as well. Both had helped support their families back home, and now things were very difficult. Chen, too, said that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that this was all a big mistake. And he appealed to the judges’ sense of family—he was an only child, and if he was forced to spend the rest of his life in jail there would be no one to look after his parents. He assured the judges that he had nothing to do with a plan to export drugs from Bali to Australia. If he had, he said, he would certainly have told the authorities.

Nguyen’s plea was in a similar vein. He didn’t come from a rich family and his mother had been and in and out of hospital for years; it was Nguyen himself, as the oldest and the only son, who helped support the family financially and paid for the school fees and education expenses of his four younger sisters. Nguyen said he was stunned to learn that other Bali Nine members had fingered him as a financier of this operation. ‘How could I possibly be the financier when I could barely look after myself after supporting my sisters?’ he asked the court. Nguyen begged the judges to believe that the only key role he had ever played in his life was to his
family. It was ridiculous to suggest that he was a bigwig in a drug-smuggling ring.

At the end of the three personal defence pleas, Judge Istiningsih Rahayu took the step of asking all three if they felt any regret. Yes, they all had. Did they feel guilt? No. They felt only regret that they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Later, outside the court, Judge Istiningsih explained that the question had been one final bid to uncover whether any of the trio admitted to any criminal actions. Judge Istiningsih had her answer.

The same question had been asked after the three had given evidence earlier in the trial. On this occasion their answers had been largely monosyllabic, and there were lots of instances where they couldn’t remember much at all, saying it was all such a long time ago. Nguyen proffered that he had been under pressure at the police station when he gave his statement. What kind of pressure was it? Just verbal. But he couldn’t remember whether he had read the statement before he signed it. He said he had no relationship with the people arrested at the airport.

Chen’s evidence began in a whisper. He, too, couldn’t remember much because it was so long ago. He said he had stayed alone at the White Rose Hotel.
Was he sure he had been alone?
Yes, he was.
But didn’t you stay with one of them? Matthew, where did he stay? ‘
Can’t remember, it’s too long ago. Next question.’
So where did Matthew stay? ‘
Can’t remember.’ Surely these kinds of answers—when it was known that he had stayed in
room 1022 of the White Rose Hotel in Kuta with Norman—were not helping his cause.

Chen went on to deny meeting any members of the Bali Nine in Australia. He had met them in clubs in Bali, he said. He also told the judges that he had been under pressure during questioning at the police station—‘They were talking really loud and shouting and pushing,’ he said.

The next witness was Norman. He agreed he had been at the Adhi Dharma Hotel but he said he hadn’t seen Andrew Chan or any of the four mules there. And, contrary to the evidence of Renae Lawrence and Martin Stephens, he said he did not bring a black bag into their room and leave it there at the request of Chan. Asked why he had been arrested, Norman’s answer was short: ‘They found powder of some sort.’

Compared to the evidence against the other six, the case against the Melasti group was far more circumstantial. They had been arrested in a hotel with a suitcase containing 350 grams of heroin that had been linked, through forensic testing, to the 8.2 kilograms found on the mules. Nguyen was alleged to have helped recruit the Brisbane boys, and Norman was accused of carrying the bag of heroin to the hotel room before the parcels were strapped onto Lawrence and Stephens. Plus there was evidence that Chen and Norman were to be the next couriers, and that they were waiting for a second shipment of heroin to arrive before it was strapped to their own bodies.

The Melasti group’s legal tactic, from day one at the police station, had been to say as little as possible; that continued in court. One day, after the prosecution demanded life sentences for all three, their lawyer, MH Rifan—who also represented Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran—was asked if he thought perhaps, in hindsight, the strategy of silence had been an error. He did not.

When Michael Norman gave character evidence for his son, he was asked at the end about his hopes for his son’s case. He was earnest in saying that Matthew should be set free and allowed to go home. As the last day of their trial ended, that seemed a desolate hope.

J
udge Suryowati is trying to hide her tears behind a fan. Talking about the death sentence she handed out to Myuran Sukumaran two days earlier makes it worse. She had not wanted to deliver such a crushing penalty and had even tried to talk her two fellow judges out of it. But it was useless: in her heart she always knew that—given the young man’s crime—under Indonesian law there really was no other option. She tried anyway. Then when judgment day came all she could see in front of her was the ‘gentle’ face of Sukumaran and, behind him, his little brother.

Next to Judge Suryowati, fellow Judge I Gusti Lanang Dauh’s voice reached a crescendo as he neared the end of the judgment. Stand up. Deliver the sentence—‘
Hukuman mati
,’ Dauh boomed. Death. The forty-nine-year-old mother of two dropped her gaze and
squeezed her eyes; she didn’t want anyone to see her crying inside the courtroom. But the minute she got back to her desk, she let it all out. They were the tears of a judge who had just watched a young man throw away his life—a young man not much older than her own two daughters. Now she is still crying.

Judgment day had not been easy for anyone, the judges included. Arif Supratman, whose four children are the same ages as members of the Bali Nine, had prayed constantly before the decision. The only people in the courtroom taking any pleasure in the verdict were the cheer squad for death that had assembled nearby, almost droning out the judges’ historic order.
Hidup hakim
and
bagus hakim
, the anti-drugs group yelled, approving of the sentence to end the lives of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the smuggling racket’s leaders.

Judge Dauh’s voice had risen almost to a shout as he told stunned onlookers that the drugs involved could have yielded 8200 victims. ‘All the people in this world know the danger of narcotic abuse,’ he said. ‘If the heroin was exported by the accused and circulated in the community, if each person used one gram there would be 8200 human beings who would become victims.’

Judge Supratman directed similar comments at Chan: ‘The act of the accused and his friends, now famous as the Bali Nine, has made a black mark on Bali as a top tourist destination. The sentence for the accused must be equal to his actions.’ He went on: Chan had shown no regret whatsoever; he gave
complicated and conflicting evidence; his actions were contrary to government policy aimed at stamping out drugs. So the mitigating factors which might help lessen the sentence—
tidak ada
.

Nothing. None. Zero. It was the same for Sukumaran:
tidak ada
.

Later Judge Supratman said that a drug dealer’s crime is of the same magnitude as that of a terrorist. It’s just that terrorist’s bombs, like those in the Bali nightclubs in 2002, killed 200 people in one night—the impact is sudden. The evil effects of drugs take longer to manifest themselves but are just as deadly, and, in many ways, more deadly, as they affect generations to come. Judge Supratman is not alone in that view—that’s why Indonesia and nations across Southeast Asia are unapologetically tough and unrelenting in drugs cases.

Judge Supratman has no feelings either way for Chan. He’s a judge; his job is not about sympathy—it’s about applying the law. But, personally, for the life of him he can’t work out why young people—educated, smart, with jobs and families who love them, like the members of the Bali Nine—would ever want to get tied up with drugs.

At the verdicts for Sukumaran and Chan there was none of the bedlam that had erupted months earlier with the conviction of Schapelle Corby. Sukumaran didn’t reveal what he was thinking, just as Chan had sat, emotionless, to receive the same fate a couple of
hours earlier. Sukumaran’s rapidly blinking eyes were the only sign of his nerves. Earlier he had arrived at court with an angry glare, shouldering media crews out of his way, looking like he was ready to lash out with all his might; Chan had to stop him from punching a photographer. It was the most emotion Sukumaran had shown since the whole saga began. But in court he sat like an ocean of calm. Their parents absent, Chan and Sukumaran were supported by their brothers.

In a nearby court two of the mules, Michael Czugaj and Martin Stephens, were being told their futures: they would spend the rest of their lives in jail. Czugaj held hands with his parents, Stephan and Vicki; Martin Stephens exhaled and looked to the floor. What was the use of having a trial in the first place, he wondered later.

It was the same sentence as that handed out by judges twenty-four hours earlier to their co-accused, Scott Rush and Renae Lawrence. The Melasti three—Matthew Norman, Tan Duc Thanh and Si Yi Chen—were still to be told of their life sentences. But none of that mattered at this moment: the Bali court had just handed down its first death sentence for drug smuggling and Andrew Chan had become the first Australian in history sentenced to death in Indonesia. Sukumaran was the second.

The families of the Bali Nine—many of them expecting sub–fifteen year punishments—were horrified at the severity of all the sentences. And they made it known. Led by Lee and Christine Rush, the Australian Federal Police again became the target.

‘One thing that we have learnt is that we cannot rely on being an Australian citizen and receiving good treatment from our government,’ Mrs Rush said outside the court. ‘Our federal police can do, go wherever they want, do anything, anytime without supervision from the Australian Attorney-General or from the Justice Minister.’ This time, however, the AFP hit back, with Commissioner Mick Keelty saying that his officers had simply done their job.

As the Rush family was attacking the AFP, their son’s criminal record and details of his drug addiction was being made public in Australia. Scott’s charges included drug possession, and fraud and theft—the tools of trade for addicts worldwide. There were also revelations that a warrant was out for his arrest after he failed to show on three charges that were due to be heard during the week he was in Bali.

This information had been a closely guarded secret to that point; many journalists were carrying a copy of the warrant and deliberating with their bosses on when to run it. Rush’s boy-next-door image fell apart after the revelation, and his parents’ attack on the AFP fell on deaf ears. Despite the heartfelt sympathy for his parents, talkback radio and newspaper letter columns filled with support for the AFP and its fight to stop drugs reaching our borders.

It wasn’t just Rush who boasted a criminal record, either—a warrant had been issued for Czugaj, who was in police custody in Bali when he was due to appear in a suburban Brisbane Magistrates’ Court on driving-related
charges. And it wasn’t his first appearance in court—he’d had convictions the previous year for wilful damage and public nuisance. The third Brisbane boy, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, had also been convicted of drink driving, and Lawrence and Norman had been facing charges in New South Wales before their arrests in Bali. But the ringleaders, Sukumaran and Chan, had a clean slate, with no history of trouble with the law.

None of that mattered now, though: the judges had delivered their verdicts, dismissing any of the claims put forward by the mules that they were threatened. This was an organised network, they were all adults, and they could have sought the assistance of police. None of them had, and now they would pay heavily.

It’s interesting to ponder what might have happened if Australian courts had dealt more harshly with the likes of Scott Rush. Indonesia’s treatment of drug criminals is clear from the moment holiday-makers set foot inside the country, and it’s an attempt by decision-makers to stamp out a flourishing drug trade that is killing many of their young. In Australia, too, the scourge of drug addiction continues to kill young people, destroy families and cost the Australian taxpayer dearly. In the eyes of some, no doubt, our courts need to focus more on punishment, or perhaps more on rehabilitation, but the possibility remains that if intervention had occurred earlier, and Scott Rush had been sent to jail for some of his earlier crimes or ordered into rehabilitation, he might not now be facing life in an Indonesian jail.

Rush’s story is a sad one: a young, good-looking lad from a good family in a good suburb, attending a good school, but still going off the rails. And it’s nearly impossible not to feel overwhelming sympathy for his parents, described by one friend as the salt of the earth, whose lives have been thrown into chaos at a time when they should be enjoying the fruits of their hard work and welcoming grandchildren into their fold. Likewise with Renae Lawrence, whose parents and step-parents love her dearly and cannot countenance the years she will spend in an Indonesian jail. And Matthew Norman, who has a twin seemingly a million miles away in New South Wales. Or Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, whose parents have shifted house and cut off contact with so many people to hide their desperate sadness. Or Si Yi Chen’s parents, whose only child now will live out his days in jail in another country. Or Martin Stephens, whose mother has spent months on end in Bali, to be beside her son.

Or Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who, sometime down the track, could be tied to a post on the orders of the Bali court, a hood hiding their heads and dressed in an apron marked with a red cross over their hearts, before they are shot dead. It will be night-time when the police come to get them, but a decoy of cars will be sent out to foil attempts by anyone to follow. A twelve-member firing squad, drawn from the elite paramilitary police called the Mobile Brigade, or Brimob, will be there, ready to take aim and fire. Sometimes it works the first time, other times it
doesn’t, but to ease the conscience of those holding the rifles, only one or two of them will have live rounds, and the squad’s commander always has the right to take a final shot to the head with his pistol to make sure death comes quickly. Chan or Sukumaran’s family won’t be invited, although they will be given a few days’ notice so that they can say their final goodbyes. Under Indonesian law, executions cannot be witnessed by anyone other than the firing squad, its commander, a prosecutor, a doctor and a religious person.

Alternatively, after appeals to Denpasar’s High Court or the Supreme Court in Jakarta, Chan and Sukumaran’s lives may be spared. If so, they may even come home, along with the other seven, if a prisoner exchange deal is brokered between the Indonesian and Australian governments. Then Prime Minister John Howard was close to tears a few hours after the death penalty had been ordered, pleading with other young Australians to take heed. Defending the AFP’s action in alerting Indonesian police in the first place, Howard promised to lobby the Indonesian government to commute the death sentences, just as he had done months earlier over Singapore’s decision to execute Tuong Van Nguyen. His pleas for mercy went unheeded then, and while experts believe a prisoner exchange program with Indonesia is likely, the Indonesian court verdicts flouted the pressure applied by least two Australian ministers to ensure that the death penalty was not sought against any of the Bali Nine in the first place. And it is unlikely any prisoner
exchange program can help Sukumaran and Chan if their sentences are not overturned on appeal—the death penalty had not been not articulated in any of the programs to date.

For Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan—and the other seven young Australians and their families—the fight has just begun. They are taking one day at a time. In the immediate future, organiser and mule will need to develop a relationship that allows them to survive side by side in jail. That might not be easy, and had certainly been made harder after some lawyers spoke out against Renae Lawrence’s recommended sentence, which meant she ended up getting life like her co-accused. Sobbing and angry, she now wonders why she ever cooperated in the first place. Others can’t understand why the court didn’t believe they were threatened.

Back in his cell, the swagger has all but disappeared from Andrew Chan, the first person ever sentenced by a Bali court to death for drugs charges. The smirk is still there, but everyone knows it’s a front to hide the panic and angst that he and his family are now trying to grapple with. Not just for Chan, but for all nine Australians, the journey they set out on less than a year ago to this holiday island, a paradise on earth, has become a journey to hell. And for some of them, especially Chan and Sukumaran, it will be a one-way trip.