RedHanded - Episode 260 - Hotel K & The Bali 9

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

What do Gordon Ramsey’s brother, drug traffickers, rapists, gangsters, terrorists, thieves, and some of the unluckiest tourists in the world have in common? They’ve all spent time in Bali’s infamous Kerobokan prison, otherwise known as Hotel K.  Built around 40 years ago to house 300 inmates, Hotel K is now home to over 1400, over three-quarters of whom are in for drug charges, in a country with some of the most draconian drug laws on the planet. Welcome to Indonesia, where being caught with narcotics could end with you with your back against a wall, staring down the barrels of a firing squad. 2022 LIVE SHOW TICKET LINKS: https://redhandedpodcast.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, the Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the show. We're doing a different kind of show. A live kind of show. A show that you can physically attend.

Of live kind of physical attending shows. This sounded much better in our heads guys it doesn't matter we're coming on tour this october i know we said we weren't going to do it this year but we are we're going to do a uk europe tour exactly we are coming to dublin helsinki stockholm manchester oslo berlin london edinburgh before all of you americans kick off we are working on it we will see you in 2023 before that october, if you want to come to this tour, tickets are definitely going to sell out because they always do. Tickets are on sale now if you are a patron.

If you are not a patron, tickets come on sale tomorrow, Friday the 26th of August. Link is in the episode description. Go there tomorrow morning, get your tickets, because they will be gone very soon. Exactly. So make sure you do it right now. What are you doing? It's not like you've got a life. Click. Bye.

I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Full Fat Red Handed. If you have been keeping an eye on your RSS feed and if you aren't subscribed, who even are you? You'll know that we have two shows a week now because we cannot stop. It's called Shorthand and it is a way to listen to yourself interesting in 30 minutes or less. Topical things, topical shit. Also dolphins, all sorts, all sorts over on Shorthand, so make sure you pick that up every Tuesday on the topic of extra stuff. Tomorrow, Friday,

if you're listening to this on a Thursday, or the day after tomorrow if you are a patron, you are getting what you've asked for, which is an episode on the West Memphis Three as a thank you for putting us... We're at two episodes on the West Memphis Three. Well, quite. Because it is a beast. Yeah.

So we had to split it into two. We had to do two parts, but you're getting them both on the same day. So it's basically probably going to be like three hours of red-handed do West Memphis Three

coming out tomorrow. Exactly. And the lesson we've learned is to not do what you tell us. But it is going to be amazing. So keep your eyes out, your ears out, your noses out,

your armpits out for the lads and also west memphis three which is coming tomorrow we don't have the west memphis three for you today we're actually going to indonesia again if you follow us on the social media you will know that we went to bali earlier this. And the experience that we had is quite different from the one we are going to tell you about today. Yeah, I have a lot of love for Indonesia. I've been very lucky that I've spent quite a lot of time there and gone from sort of end to end of it and had nothing but positive experiences. So this just made me sad. I was sort of drawn to this story because I'm obsessed with the idea of prison tourism,

the idea that Westerners can go to developing countries and pay to take a tour of a prison. So there's one in La Paz, which is super duper famous. And these are functioning prisons. Functional prisons, yeah. See, that blows my mind. I'd happily go be a tourist in like, this used to be a prison and this is where they used to, you know, do whatever.

Like, done loads of that. But a functioning prison? That is weird. Yep, and that is what we are dealing with today. So let's get on with it. She was a drug dealer. He was a murderer. Can I make it any more obvious?

Probably not. I think that's as obvious as it gets. Nita Ramos and her boyfriend, who we're going to call Tony, I'm under no delusion that that is his actual name, seeing as he's Balinese. Tony and Nita spent the early 90s walking hand in hand between Hindu temples and mosques on the beautiful island of Bali. But this paradise partnership had a difference. Their romantic rambles together were short and probably quite repetitive because Nita and Tony didn't meet on one of Bali's stunning beaches or even at one of the island's world-famous dance parties. Nita and Tony met in Bali's largest and most famous prison, Karabukan.

Now usually on Red Handed we tell you stories about people. This week we're telling you the story of a building, Karabukan Prison, also known as Hotel K, and what it came to signify for Indonesian international relations over a few decades. Kerabokan was built in 1979, and since its beginnings, the prisoners who live within her walls have been largely responsible for the day-to-day upkeep of the penitentiary. These days there are gardens tended by inmates, the temples are swept, and offerings for the gods are left like clockwork. Within Hotel K's crumbling walls, there is what is known as a tamping system.

And what that means is that there are some prisoners who are given more freedoms in exchange for keeping an eye on the others, being in charge of headcounts at lights out and stuff like that. In Hotel K, for many years, and maybe even still now, the tampings have more power than the guards. The tamping system is very common in Indonesia, and sentences are often shortened if the tamping is particularly influential or useful. Tony became a tamping almost immediately upon entering Hotel K

because he was well-known, even feared amongst the locals. So no one was going to tell him no. And because of that, Tony ended up orchestrating the most embarrassing jailbreak in Balinese history. Embarrassing for the jail, obviously. I'm sure Tony was pretty pleased with himself. Leveraging his influence as a tamping, Tony organised all 300 inmates of the prison.

I really want to say to form a flash mob. Yeah, to dance the night away. To I don't feel like dancing. No, no, he didn't do that. He organised all 300 inmates of the prison to set fire to kerosene soaked mattresses once they had been locked in their cells at 5.30pm. So they have kerosene because the food is so awful that most inmates opt to cook their own food on kerosene stoves. So kerosene is something that they can get their hands on without even smuggling

it in. Wow. Okay. And Tony really led the charge on this. He didn't just sort of stitch everybody up. He was the first one to flick the match. And within 10 minutes the prison had been engulfed in a smoky haze. There were only 14 guards in the compound.

Considering there are 300 prisoners, that is quite the intense ratio of guard to prisoner. Can you work it out? I can. It would be about 20. 20 prisoners to a guard. Yeah. That's a lot. Quick maths. It is a lot.

So, yeah, the 14 guards in the compound were totally powerless to stop the blaze and the mattress fires were powerless to stop the blaze. And the mattress fires were started one after the other. And so the guards had no way of knowing which cell would be the next to add to the inferno. The whole thing is completely choreographed. They've been planning this for months. It's kind of like, you know, on the Great Wall of China in Mulan, where they see the fires go down the wall.

Everyone knows who is in front of them and who is after them. Wow. Well, I guess you got nothing but time. Yeah, exactly. And as we all learn, heroin. Time, heroin and kerosene. The perfect recipe for jailbreaks. Sruti Bala's memoir. So the female prisoners, of which Nita was one of 53, were kept in a separate part of the prison. They were locked up an hour before the men, and none of them knew about the fire plan,

not even Nita. As the women realised the imminent danger of the situation, they began to scream for the guards. But they would never come. The guards had problems of their own. In the male section of the prison, everything was going according to plan. All of the tempings were under strict instruction to smash open the locks of their cells with iron bars when the time was right.

Tony had stolen the keys to the front door of the prison and once all of the cells were smashed open, every prisoner, every male prisoner that is, was told that they had to make a break for it. Any inmate who did not run would be hunted down by Tony himself and they would be killed. Before the mass exodus began, kerosene-soaked rags were thrown into the prison's registration office, thereby destroying the criminal records held within. Which is smart, because they're like, oh, even if you catch me, what are you going to do? Show me the receipts. You've got none. They're on fire. And as that happened, the guards were locked in their offices and fireworks that had somehow been kept inside a drum of kerosene were set off.

Why are fireworks at a prison? There's a lot of things in this prison that shouldn't be there. So amongst all of this pandemonium, a male inmate was sent to fetch Nita Ramos. Nita had no idea why it was only her name that was being called and why it was only her cell that was unlocked. So a terrified Nita didn't run. But the men certainly did. The inmates poured out of the doors of the prison. Many of them hopped into a long line of taxis that had been pre-booked.

This is some organisation. And these taxis that had been pre-booked were actually waiting outside the prison. They're just waiting outside the prison. I think no one is surprised by there being taxis, obviously, because tourists come there all the time. It's like a destination, right? So no one is surprised by the line of taxis. But when the prisoners start getting in there, that's unexpected.

Yes, quite. And imagine just bringing a taxi driver like, OK, so I'm currently in prison, but tomorrow I won't be. So if you could just be there at this time and I'll jump in and then we can just just leave but drive real fast right let them eat my dust because the building's on fire and there's a kerosene drum filled with fireworks about to explode so those who didn't have the presence of mind to book cabs in advance hijacked cars and motorbikes and the others just ran but this was not the safest option police had already been given permission to shoot assailants on sight

and those on foot were threatened with open gunfire and so most of them ended up surrendering on the spot. Not Tony though. He was one of the first out the door and he was already miles away. But some prisoners, the ones who just didn't even feel like running, they just sat in the cafes outside of the prison eating nasi garang and hanging out i mean when you find yourself a good nasi garang nasi garang or run well right i think and that's what makes me think that quite a lot of them had

absolutely no intention of going anywhere they were just like i'll leave so tony doesn't hunt me down and kill me i'll have a meal and then I'll go back. Exactly. Just one good fried rice and then I'm back. A total of 289 men escaped the prison that day, which considering there's 300 of them is pretty good odds, but it wouldn't last for long. By sunset, 104 of the men were right back where they started. This is my favourite bit. One prisoner made a break for it to his family's house and when he got there there he asked his brother to call the prison and explain that he would return once he'd had a shower and a home-cooked meal. He kept his word, that's exactly what he did. He was like, I'll be back by sundown, just give me a minute. Wow. So most of the recaptured men claimed that they had only run because they were afraid that Tony and his gangster

brother would kill them, or worse, their families. Because this is the thing, the were afraid that Tony and his gangster brother would kill them or worse, their families. Because this is the thing, the only way that Tony would have been able to get out of this situation is if everybody cooperated, right? He needed all of them to play their part. And whether any of them had the intention, like you say, of actually running away and living a life on the lam or whether they were happy to just serve their time is questionable. But yeah, Tony is a figure of fear. fear yeah and he needs them to slow the police down so he can get away so this duo tony and his brother had a reputation for cutting people's heads off with machetes and this they would do for people who just owed them tiny debts

yeah they're scary guys yeah so imagine if you're the man in the cell next door like i'm not going to set fire to my mattress he's probably going to do far worse. But still, returning escapees were whipped and guards, embarrassed by the whole thing, poured chilly water on their open wounds. Yeah. So they don't go back to a cuddle from the guards. No, they're in trouble. So as neat as Sel was the only one on the woman's block that was opened, even though she didn't run, she was of course immediately under suspicion.

Although the authorities didn't need any intelligence from Nita to figure out who the mastermind was behind the jailbreak, all of the men who either came back or were dragged back happily told the guards that it was Tony who was the ringleader. For months after the great escape, security tightened up at Hotel K, which basically only meant that no visitors were allowed in the prison. Getting into Karabakhon will cost you less than 50p. I don't know post-COVID if that is still the case. One would hope not, but who knows. Tourists are free to roam around the prison, talking to anyone.

Family members of the incarcerated most of the time can visit every day. Conjugal visits are very common. For a small fee, a guard will even hire a sex worker for an inmate. In the book Hotel K, we'll come on to Chappelle Corby in a minute. Hotel K is kind of an auxiliary book to Chappelle Corby's autobiography. So Chappelle Corby writes her memoir in conjunction with an author called Catherine Bonella. Catherine Bonella then publishes her own book, Flying Solo, which is called Hotel K. So Hotel K is probably not a super widespread name. It's just what Chappelle Corby calls it because she's like, people are coming and going, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway,

we're going to call it that because it's easier to say. So in the book Hotel K, which you can find, the author Catherine regales the reader with tales of sex workers using mattresses on the floor for a string of male prisoners, one after the other, sometimes as many as 16 in a row. There's also a particularly graphic story, which I've never been able to forget, about a woman wanking off her husband as he used their newborn baby as a privacy shield. And this is just happening in corridors. Well, happy holidays. Graphic. The level of morbid tourism in this.

I find it really bizarre. Yeah. So the rules were as follows. Being allowed to have sex with a woman an inmate knew would cost the prisoner as little as $11. But if they wanted a sex worker, that's going to cost them about $100. I could go on. But hopefully we have managed to paint an adequate picture of what we're dealing with here. Carribeau County is a prison unlike the ones we have experienced in the West. It's kind of lawless,

but it's lawless if you have enough money. If you have enough money to pay off whoever, you can do literally whatever you want. So the building itself, you'll be completely unsurprised to hear, has never been structurally sound. And it is a rat-infested swamp. The 90s brought with it a drug boom and with it the population of Hotel K swelled from hundreds to over a thousand. Which it is fundamentally unable to facilitate in any kind of humane way. And the guards became more ruthless in attempting to control the overcrowded prison population. One guard would shock prisoners with a cattle prod for his own entertainment. Now Indonesia has always had extremely draconian policies on illicit drugs, the death penalty being the most severe. And given that Bali is the only island in the archipelago

that is Hindu rather than Muslim, it has over the years become the go-to destination for partiers. And where there be set godblins, there also be a market for drugs. As the tourism industry boomed in Bali, which economically did them wonders, so did the drug trafficking trade. And in a destructive mirror image, Hotel K became the United Nations of drug traffickers from all over the world. Foreigners from over 25 different countries under drug charges poured into the prison. The first to be executed by firing squad was 27-year-old Frenchman Michael Blanc. That was in 2000. On Boxing Day 1999, Michael Blanc

had flown to Bali from Mumbai with two diving tanks. Inside one of the tanks was four kilos of hashish. Michael said that the hash was not his, and he claimed the tanks weren't even his. He said that they belonged to a friend of his who lived in India. But this friend was impossible to get hold of, which may have been convenient for him, but was decidedly inconvenient for Michael, who right until the end protested his innocence.

The bags of hash inside the tank were never even fingerprinted. A lot of stuff this episode is like mistranslations or like the translator's not very good. So the Balinese police claim that Michael confesses that it's his and because he confesses, they don't need to investigate further. Michael says he never did, but there's no CCTV, there's no transcript, there's no tape, so nobody knows and he just gets shot in the back of the head.

Wow. But before he gets shot in the back of the head, whilst awaiting his death sentence in prison, Michael became a full blown heroin addict within Hotel K. His mother refused to pay a bribe in exchange for a reduced sentence of just 15 years rather than the death penalty, because she was convinced that he was innocent and that justice would prevail. It didn't. Michael's descent into addiction is all too common in Hotel K. There's even a so-called junkie block, where all of the users are clubbed together and AIDS and hepatitis are rife. Because injecting heroin is the most economic way to get high,

smoking it in comparison is a lot more expensive and less potent. Naturally, sharing needles is very common, and when inmates are really desperate, they pierce their veins with pen cases. But if you have money, you can pay to upgrade your living quarters. High-level drug baron cells look more like hotel rooms. They're kitted out with TVs, soft mattresses, baths, hot running water and even servants. These type of prisoners can conduct their business from inside jail quite easily. They're allowed to have phones and they can come and go as they please. One VIP even paid for prison renovations during his time on the inside. There have been several famous faces at Carabocan over the years, including Gordon Ramsey's

brother, Ronnie Ramsey. Yep. Sure. He's in one of the documentaries, desperately vying for airtime with the news crew. It's pretty tragic. So Ronnie Ramsey was arrested in Bali in 2007 in possession of 100 milligrams of heroin. He spent six months in Karabakh awaiting trial. He was sentenced to 10 years, but in the end served just 15 months and paid a fine.

So he's back in England now. I think Gordon Ramsay's done a few interviews about it. He's like, I've just had to wash my hands of him. And it's sad, but there's nothing I can do. I think he's homeless now, actually. Oh, wow. And other well-known names at Hotel K include Chappelle Corby, who you will have heard of if you are Australian. But just in case you aren't, this is Chappelle's story. A very condensed Chappelle Corby story. This is not a Chappelle Corby episode. This is a shorthand.

So on the 8th of October 2004, Chappelle travelled from Brisbane to Bali. When she landed at Denpasar International Airport, she was stopped at customs. When customs officials opened Chappelle's bodyboard bag, they found over four kilos of marijuana, which Chappelle always maintained wasn't hers. Chappelle was sentenced to 20 years in Balinese jail in 2005. She eventually made it back to Brisbane in 2017 after years of appeals. Yeah, she like has to do her parole in Bali, like, so her sister moves to Bali to do her parole with her, basically. And Chappelle Corby is like

she is so put together really beautiful and similar to Michael Blanc it's the same story of the customs official saying well she opened the bag she opened the bag she said it was hers blah blah and Chappelle's like no I didn't but there's no evidence one way or the other honestly this was one of my biggest fears while I was traveling I know everyone was like oh you're going here there and whatever on your own and was like, I actually wasn't that concerned about like somebody doing something nefarious to me. So just try to avoid like drinking too much or anything like that. And just keeping myself like very focused. But my biggest concern was always when you met people and they were like, oh, we're going to the same place. Like we're crossing the same border or whatever. Let's go

together. I was a little bit of me was a little bit paranoid of them i was like you could slip something in my bag let me carry it over the border for you and then get it out of my bag when we get to said destination on the other side and honestly the only thing i was ever concerned about was that kind of happening and then you'll end up like bridget jones singing like a virgin in prison in thailand exactly like somebody opens my bag and then that person's just like if we we get it over the line and I get it from you, great. If you get caught, it's not me. Like, whatever. Fucking terrifying.

There's something so terrifying about crossing borders on foot. It's such a bizarre experience and if you've never done it, it's kind of indescribable. Because if you're doing it on foot, you're surrounded by grubby backpackers anyway. Oh my God, honestly.

I think one of the hairiest border crossings I did was between Mexico and Belize. Crossing the border there the taxi driver was like I'm not going to cross you over the border I'll drop you here and then you'll have to walk over the border and we were like okay. But he was doing something really weird where he was in the car with us and I was with Dami our friend and he can obviously speak fluent Spanish so he could understand what the taxi driver was saying. And he was like, had the window down and was talking to another taxi driver. But he was saying really weird things, according to Dami. Like I couldn't understand what he was saying.

Dami was like getting more and more agitated. And he is not that kind of person. So I was very like, why are you looking so agitated? And Dami was like, we need to get out of this car right now. And then he just opened the doors and he was like, here and he made me get out and i still didn't really understand what happened and he was like he was making me feel very nervous like he was taking us somewhere we weren't asking to go and i was like what the fuck if i'd been on my own i fully wouldn't have had a clue what was going on but yeah hairy stuff you're right foot crossings are

the scariest definitely i think once i can't remember oh it would have been going into nicaragua or on a bus and they just take your passports off you the bus driver just takes all of the passports of everyone on the bus and then you just have to sit there for hours in the beating sun being like wow i literally i'm stateless right now i don't actually know like honestly i really hope that bus driver comes back that entire border crossing was hilarious because we get out and you're in the middle of nowhere. And the only thing there is, is you're waiting for a bus to come so that you can get into Belize City. Stood there waiting, waiting, waiting.

There is no board that tells you when the buses are coming. You just wait. And then one eventually turns up. Waiting, waiting. And we're like, so hungry. And we're like, oh, look, there's a woman selling corn over there on the other side of the road should we go get it we're like yeah let's go go buying corn turn around bus arrives leaves no it's like a cartoon and then we were just right we need to go back oh should we go get some water i'm sure the bus go bus fuck right off and i was like

there's a point where i was just standing in the gutter eating sweet corn and drinking water, waiting like six hours for a bus that we had missed two of. Fuck off. Anyway, back to this. Two months after Chappelle Corby was convicted, other soon-to-be-famous faces would show up in Carabocan prison, Australian faces, that would become known as the Barley Nine. And it's with the Barley Nine that we're going to

be spending the rest of our time this week. And their story starts on the 17th of April 2005, when two colleagues in their 20s, Renee Lawrence and Martin Stevenson, arrived at Barley's Den Passar International Airport. They worked together as food runners in Sydney sports stadiums, and they'd been on the island of Barley for about 11 days. and it was time for them to head back home to Sydney. The baggy clothes that they were wearing had been picked for them because they had no metal attachments. Attachments? Accessories? Fixings? Yeah, fixings.

Fixings. Trimmings. So there's no metals on these clothes. No metals on these clothes so that they would... No metals. No metals here. No metal on the clothes so they would not set off the metal detectors in the airport. And there was another reason that their clothes were baggy,

which we will reveal later on. But if you are smart, you probably can guess. So the pair grabbed their bags out of the taxi and made their way to departures, turning down offers from the porters who waited by the taxi rank. Nobody was going to be touching their bags. And to be honest, their baggy clothes were not out of place. They looked like every other tourist heading back home. They didn't look nervous. This wasn't Renee's first rodeo. She had made the same trip just six months before. Isn't it so weird that like, because obviously we have been to that airport,

so I know exactly what that looks like. I know exactly what that taxi rank looks like. I know exactly where they would have walked. And they would have looked just like everyone else. Oh, absolutely. You weren't even wearing pants. No, I wasn't. Just FYI, I was wearing trousers.

She was wearing a long dress. I was wearing a dress. I just wasn't wearing pants. She said fucking butt out and dead bizarre. So the unlikely couple made their way past the sniffer dogs. The signs stating that drug traffickers would receive the death penalty and through security without an issue. And they headed to their gate, probably overwhelmed with relief. I believe they also shake each other's hand.

So they've got CCTV and they sort of do a little. Sure. Have I ever told on the podcast the story of when i accidentally smuggled drugs i'm in despair guys it's just sweet despair sweet despair no tell me so i've told you the story but maybe i've overreacted the pudding so i went went to Amsterdam a few years ago with 10 of my friends. And when we were there, obviously, partook in some of Amsterdam's finest greenery. Sex work. Sex work. Finest greenery, finest vegetation. And I remember the last night we were there,

we just like rolled a bunch like after we had bought it from a shop that was filled with very intimidating men and came out and badly rolled it in a park smoking it everyone's having a good time last night we were in a park it starts raining and so everybody's like stuffing these joints into like various bags and one of them I must have put into my handbag and I didn't remember the next day and then I think everybody like did a last check when we were leaving our hostel like to make sure we didn't have anything on us blah blah blah and I totally just didn't know that there was still one in here so go through airport security go past all the sniffer dogs obviously I'm looking chill as fuck because I don't know that I have anything and also enjoying all that sex work so then get onto

the airplane and I open my handbag up to get my headphones out and there's just a fat joint at the bottom of my bag and I'm like oh my god and there was a girl who was sat next to me who I didn't actually know that well oh I remember this bitch yeah and I just opened my handbag and I showed my best friend and her who was sat next to me this girl she goes and then she hits the call attendant button I was like what the fuck are you doing and I turn it off so we should just tell them and i'm like tell them fucking what i'm just gonna go to the toilet and flush it yeah because yeah i don't need this i don't need to like go through heathrow security in case somebody catches me like it's just unnecessary so i'm just gonna go flush it and she was just like oh my god oh my god oh my god and they come back out the toilet

and she's like staring down the aisle at me i'm like mate you need to calm the fuck down i was like i didn't mean to do it was an accident we didn't get caught let me just go flush it i only showed it to you because i thought it was funny but yeah that was the time i accidentally almost smuggled some drugs you didn't cross a border no okay didn't almost almost got it into international airspace so yes back to this like i said they went through all of those security ranks. They did everything, probably feeling very overwhelmed with relief by the time they're out. What they didn't know, though, was that they had been being watched by Indonesian law enforcement for four days. And from the second they stepped out of their taxi, it was go time. As they waited

for their departure gate, a customs officer approached the pair. They were told that they were subjects of a random check, which was of course a total lie. It was all part of the plan. The pair agreed and opened their bags. There was nothing more ominous in them than pirated DVDs, which are illegal, but not remotely what the customs officials were looking for. I love the idea that you would just like throw them off the drugs, but we'll just like put these pirate DVDs in here. Yeah. Odd choice.

I just put like, what's the most innocuous thing? I don't know, my dirty pants. Like, why are there pirate DVDs in there? Exactly. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration

with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+.

You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,

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to check out Renee and Martin. That dog was called Maxie. I know, Maxie's a cute little... He's a good hard-working boy. Maxie stayed sitting still, though, indicating to his handler that he couldn't smell any drugs. But Maxie was wrong. Maxie's trying to help him out.

He's like... Maxie's no narc. Oh. Oh. And then Martin Stevens was told to pull his shorts down. And when he did, it revealed large packages

taped to his thighs. I just don't know how anyone can have the nerve how how could you have the nerve could you could you how to tape a bunch of packages of drugs to your thighs and walk through balinese airport security i wouldn't even let you smuggle fruit like we were in bali and i was like do you think i could just take some of this fruit home with me because it's excellent i googled it and i was like i read the words prosecution i was like nope eat it now we're not we're not going to fruit jail no i would not have the nerve and interestingly so they're being watched through cctv right because they're in an airport and renee one of

the packages starts to slip down her leg no no no and you can see her no try and like hoik it i get stressed just wearing loose tights and when i feel like the gusset is going too low let alone a fucking package of drugs taped to my sweaty leg exactly so she goes to the toilet and the indonesian police think that they've lost her because they think she's a man so like when she disappears they're like following the cctv to the toilet and the Indonesian police think that they've lost her because they think she's a man. So like when she disappears, they're like following the CCTV to the men's toilet, but she's not in there. So they think that they've lost her and then she reappears, restrapped. So obviously, Martin Stevens and Renee Lawrence's baggy clothes were meant to conceal the large packages they had taped to their bodies. Stevens tried to explain that the tape around his thighs was actually to secure a wound dressing.

He said that he'd been injured in a banana boat accident. If you're going to lie, say shark bite. The customs officials, unsurprisingly, were having absolutely none of it and the game was up. Both Martin Stevens and Renee Lawrence had 4.8 kilos of heroin strapped to their bodies around their stomachs and around their thighs and the street value of that much heroin is about two million dollars. That's like two and a half bags of sugar. Fucking hell. Two and a half bags of heroin. That's like two and a half bags of heroin. The reason they had made it past the dogs and even king of the dogs maxi is because the packages had been covered in pepper powder to mask the smell

of the drugs which apparently had worked so renee and martin were taken to an interrogation room where they just sit stony faced and there's a no smoking sign and renee's just smoking but both of them visibly shaking. I mean, you would be. I certainly fucking would be. Yeah. I mean, I can't even handle fruit jail, let alone drug jail. Yeah, mum. I mean, I've already told you about the time when I just needed to wee really badly

and they took me aside in Amsterdam airport. That's the time I wasn't smuggling anything. So if you remember, and you probably do because you're incredibly intelligent and it's also in the title of this episode, we're talking about the Barley Nine. So far, that's only two of them. So it doesn't take a genius to realise that Renee, Martin and the kilos of heroin strapped to them with sellotape are not the whole story. So let's meet the next couple of the Nine.

Scott Rush, who's just 19. He's a baby. He's a baby. These two, in particular, are schoolboys. They're a baby. He's a baby. These two in particular are schoolboys. They're fresh out of school, these two. So Scott's just 19 and Michael Kuzjak were school friends

and they had no idea who Renee or Martin were, let alone that they had been caught attempting to smuggle heroin out of the country. Had they known, considering the vast amount of heroin that these two had strapped

to their bodies, they might have turned back. But it was too late. There's a lot of moving parts going on here. The whole operation is much larger than any of the mules think it is. They individually think that they're the only people doing it, but they're going on the same fucking flight. Yeah, maybe spread that around.

So Scott and Michael's connection to Renee, Martin and heroin was a man called Andrew Chan. Andrew worked with Renee and Martin back in Sydney. And depending on who you believe, he had been organising drug runs from Bali for years. Quite a slippery character, Mr. Andrew Chan. He is very charismatic. So I watched all of the video content about this before I read both of the books. And if I'd done it the other way around I feel like my opinion would be different but you really like him when

he's talking. Yeah because it was Chan and his associate Moiran Sukumaran who I have stumbled over his name three times and it is embarrassing because I'm pretty sure that's a Tamil surname. They were the ones who strapped the heroin to the mules' bodies and sprayed the packages with pepper powder to distract the dogs. So they're very hands-on. Yeah, they're hands-on, but no heroin on their hands as they approach the airport. No, that's the place you don't want to. Or strapped to your thighs. Scott and Michael had been promised 5,000 Australian dollars

if they made it back to Sydney unscathed. Andrew Chan had made that promise. Interestingly, Renee and Martin were promised $10,000 each, maybe because they're a bit older and just negotiated better. Well, yeah, exactly. Scott and Michael would never make it back to Sydney. The two young men, who do look like actual human babies, were surrounded by customs officials at immigration.

As this happened, Andrew Chan was headed into the airport too. He arrived with an hour to spare for his flight. Nonchalant, he took out a book and began to read. He would deny it, but he was pretty experienced by this stage in the game. He wasn't nervous, and he also had no heroin on his person, which helped. But even still, the Indonesian police knew that he was involved in the trafficking scheme, and he was taken to the customs office with the other four. Chan was the only one who was not visibly shaking. So he didn't have any drugs but he did have multiple phones on his person which is suspicious in anyone's book. Whilst being held in the police station Michael Kuzczak told Indonesian police

that Chan was quote very dangerous and the other three mules seriously considered blaming the whole thing on Andrew Chan. The way I kind of imagine it is they're sitting there being like, right, I'm fucked. I'm fucked here. I'm arrested in Indonesia for heroin. This guy is involved. Do I dob him in or is something bad going to happen to me from his like nefarious associates so they're weighing it up right Michael's just terrified and he's like I don't give a fucking shit and it was at 4am that all five were taken to jail cells at the Denpasar police headquarters

so up until this point they have just been in that room where they search people but now they're in jail for real meanwhile five, five kilometres away, 24-year-old Sukumaran, who was the only one of the nine that the Indonesian police didn't know the name of, was at a place called Melasati Beach Bungalows with more associates of Andrew Chan's. Matthew Norman, who was just 18, Tandak Than Wen, and Si Yun Chen, who knew Chan from Sydney. We don't have a clear picture about how every single person is brought in, mainly because they never tell us. And there's no investigation in the way that we would understand it because it all happens in Indonesia. So I'm sure there is an explanation of how Matthew Norman ended up there.

We don't know what it is. But Wen and Chen, sorry, those are their names, Wen and Chen are much more involved with Andrew Chan than Matthew Norman is. So the room that these associates were sharing at the beach bungalow was raided by police and 334 grams of heroin and pepper powder were seized. Later, the heroin would be tested and confirmed to be the same as the kilos that were recovered at the airport. They all said that it wasn't theirs.

And just like that, they were taken off to Denpasar Police Station to join the rest of what would become known as the Bali Nine. All of the nine, bar Andrew Chan and arguably Murin Sukumaran, were pretty normal, if a bit directionless people. Certainly they've been caught up in some nasty business, but as I said, how they got there is pretty much anyone's guess, because the higher up they are in the pecking order, the less they talk. It's also hard to know just how high up Chan and Sukumaran were in Australia's criminal underworld, because I don't think anyone has ever extracted the whole story. And I just don't believe that if they are the kingpins, which is what the press told them, why are they in Bali? I think they're middlemen at absolute tops. It's not impossible that they

were being controlled by much more powerful people. But those much more powerful people, if they existed at all, have never been named or connected to the operation because Chan and Sukumaran never breathe a word. So let's stick to the people that we do know. How did the Indonesian police and customs officers know about the Bali Nine? Because like we said, they were watching them beforehand. They knew exactly who they were going after. Well, the Australian Federal Police had told them. Back in Sydney, the AFP had been building a detailed picture of the whole smuggling operation for months. And as soon as they confirmed that their targets had

left Australian soil, they sent a letter to Indonesian police, which read the following. The AFP in Australia has received information that a group of persons are illegally importing a narcotic substance believed to be heroin from Bali to Australia. The letter pegged Chan as the organiser of the whole ordeal. The godfather. Chan had been to Bali three times in the past six months and had never been caught. Why do the Australian police report Australian nationals to the Bali police when they know that the penalty for drug smuggling is death? Well, I will explain. I'm here to be the voice of the listener.

This letter handed over nine Australian nationals to the Indonesian police for drug trafficking, which was a controversial move, to say the least, because the penalty for drug smuggling in Indonesia is death. So in essence, the AFP were knowingly sending their own citizens to the hangman. On top of that, the international network manager of the AFP has said repeatedly in the press that he would do it all again in a heartbeat. And his argument is this. The AFP's job is to stop crime in Australia. So he stopped it before it even gets to Australian soil is his argument. And because the AFP had all of the details of the operation before the nine even met up in Bali, it was too good an opportunity for them to pass up. They could have stopped them going to Bali in the first place. Yeah, or stopped them as soon as they got to the airport in Australia.

Yes. So he argues that had they arrested the Bali Nine in Australia, then the mules and the traffickers would not have faced the death penalty. But there's no guarantee that they would have caught them all, especially Chan and Sukumaran, because they didn't know who Sukumaran was. He's not on any sort of list. So the argument the AFP made is that if they waited for them to get back to Australia, they wouldn't necessarily have been able to get them all at once. I don't buy that,

but that's the argument they make. But I don't think they would have got Sukumaran. His name is not in the letter. And until his arrest, Indonesian police refer to him only as the black man. So the AFP don't know who's involved. They don't know who he is. It's only because of his involvement in Indonesia. Does that mean that the death penalty is fine? No. I completely understand why this was such a controversial decision. Yeah, even after that explanation, I still find it shocking that Australia would have handed its own citizens over like that to guaranteed death penalty. I think that they didn't think it was going to happen. I wonder how much that decision was like thought through with other agencies and whether it was this person or this agency making that decision.

Because also it's going to be a diplomatic nightmare for Australia because you're not going to not have the parents of those children who are australian citizens being like you need to help our child and i know i don't know what it's like in australia but i know in the uk if you do go to another country and you become embroiled in a illegal case that the uk government doesn't have to help you i'm not saying they wouldn't face lobbying from people here and pressure like with nazanin ratcliffeaghari or anything like that. But why create this situation for yourself that is not going to be easy to resolve? So I wonder how much that was thought through with other people or whether it was a kind of unilateral decision being made here. I just don't know. No. And we can never really know. And like Hannah said, the Indonesian police didn't know Sukumaran's name, but soon everyone in Australia did.

News of the Bali Nine arrest was all over the news within days, and unlike Chappelle Corby, there was very little sympathy for the would-be smugglers. Just 36 hours after the news of the arrest broke, Australian talk radio was ablaze. And here are just some of the examples of the opinions of the public. One caller said, quote, These people that got caught over in Bali are a bunch of twits, mate. Honestly, I reckon they should be lined up and shot. Possibly this comment is a bit more prophetic than the caller probably realised.

Another long-term but first-time caller said the following. These people who strap heroin to their body, they deserve the gunfire because they kill a lot of innocent children. The Bali Nine certainly did not win the hearts and minds of the Australian population. If they had, then maybe things might have ended differently. Yeah, Chappelle Corby definitely does win the hearts and minds. I think it helps that she's extremely beautiful. And it was just weed, you know. know i think definitely definitely only just weed and also i think that when it is just in your bag there is that plausible deniability that you could be that

somebody could give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't know it was in there and that somebody put it in there in like a hostel or whatever when it is strapped to your thigh nobody can give you the benefit of the doubt that you didn't know what you were doing. There was some extremely limited sympathy for the Bali Nine, which came in the form of people offering to send them essentials to the prison. But that kindness did only flood in after the distraught parents, especially of the younger members of the Nine, gave interviews, clearly shattered and wracked with despair.

And it is really haunting. There's a lot of footage of it. So I can understand why that would cause an emotional response in people if they were to watch it. Back in Denpasar police station, things were getting interesting. Andrew Chan denied all knowledge of everything. He just repeatedly told officials that he knew nothing about the heroine and he'd just been on holiday in Bali for the fourth time in six months.

His enforcer, Sukumumaran also denied everything and he was called the enforcer by the press because he had martial arts training and he had been spotted out and about with Andrew Chan in Bali. Sukumaran's specific role is never made clear. We don't know if he's higher up or lower down than Andrew Chan and we never will. So while Chan and Sukumaran weren't talking, the mules, on the other hand, were all singing like birds. You just would, wouldn't you? No, oh my god, I would say whatever the fuck I needed to say to get off death row in Indonesia. And they all told the same story. They all said that they had been told by Andrew Chan that he would pay for them to go on a holiday to bali they did not expect to give him anything in return which again just makes it sound so like who would think that is the case exactly no one and i mean no one

thinks that that is the case there is absolutely no such thing as a free lunch and there's certainly no such thing as a free trip to bali no like i have differing levels of sympathy for all of the members of the bali line some of them are just children yeah i do not believe for a second that none of them knew what was happening no no no especially again it's not just slipped in their bags it is taped to their person yeah like there is no way they didn't know i mean even if you want to ignore the fact that there is literally drugs taped to their body they're given specific clothes all of these kind of things to wear to avoid metal detection etc like there's no way they thought this no and again i feel the same i have varying levels of sympathy probably down to age i agree to be perfectly honest

with you but yeah it's it's tricky it's a tricky case it's a trick i mean arguably they're all old enough to know better but some of them just look so young that it's so hard to like i find that difficult to separate so they all continued their story saying that once they were in bali they were told that they had to smuggle narcotics back into australia and that now presumably because they'd accepted this free holiday to bali they were too scared to say no in case Andrew Chan killed their families. Some of them say that they don't know what's in the packages. And I'm like, yes, you do. I'm sorry. It's not salami, is it?

I understand why they're saying that. Obviously, any opportunity to kind of minimise your role in this is probably going to feel like the right thing to do at the time, especially when you are very young. But I'm assuming that this also didn't help with the levels of sympathy back home. Because now, not only are you a drug smuggler, you also seem like a big fucking liar. So many different stories of how Chan and Sukumaran were connected to the rest of the Bali Nine were told whilst they were under arrest. So it was impossible to keep track of all of these storylines. And to be honest, it isn't really that important to the story in terms of how these two

were involved in it. Yeah, I think one of the big mistakes that the book makes is, and I can understand why it does this, it just gets so bogged down in like the minute connections between all of them. And like, it just doesn't matter. It really doesn't. Because all you need to know is that everyone denied everything and never gave a single inch. Had the Bali Nine been tried in Australia, it may have been a different story. We may have a clearer picture

of what actually happened and who was really in charge. But here, that's just not the case. After their interrogations, all nine Australian citizens were shipped off to Keribokan Prison where they would meet Chappelle Corby in person. There's no way of putting this in the episode nicely, but it's in

my brain, so it has to be in all of your brains too. Another specific Karibokan Prison fact for you, the solitary confinement cell is called the rat cell, and it's called that for a very specific reason. If you've been to Indonesia, you will know that squatting toilets are the norm, and it's called that for a very specific reason. If you've been to Indonesia, you will know that squatting toilets are the norm, and naturally, the solitary confinement cell has one of its own. It has never been cleaned. So decades of human faeces have built up in the hole, in the floor, but the newer, wetter waste from the current inhabitant of the cell breaks down the residue enough for rats living under the prison to be visible from the cell as they wiggle around through the years of built-up human shit. At least I didn't put it in your bit.

No. So there are rats in the toilet? There's rats in the toilet and you can see them, yeah. Wiggling through poo. And they'll bite you? Probably. Anyway. My biggest fears.

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a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. So the trials of the Bali Nine began on the 14th of October 2005. They were given Indonesian translators and it has to be said that some of them were a lot better than others. Like a lot. Like there's a really big difference. The mules were tried in one court, whilst Chan and Sukumaran were tried separately, although they all faced the exact same charge, which was the exportation of narcotics as part of an organisation, for which in Indonesia, like we said, the highest penalty is death.

And although no one really thought that that would actually happen, most involved in the trial, including the AFP, were convinced that some of the Bali Nine would face maybe like 20 years, like Chappelle Corby did, and that perhaps the ringleaders would get life. But they were wrong. I think that's it. I do think that the AFP genuinely thought that they might get life. I mean, comparisons to Chappelle Corby, again, I'm like, that was weed.

Yeah. And there was maybe a reasonable doubt, you could say, that she didn't know it was there. This is a completely different case how anyone thought that the Balinese officials would not come down hard on people smuggling in an organized manner. It wasn't just a one-off again like chapelle corby in an organized manner heroin especially a man who's been known to go there repeatedly in the space of six months this is organized crime how they were not going to come down hard on them i do not know it's just the level of naivety and the level of like gambling with this many people's lives is shocking and And again, maybe some people don't have any sympathy. Maybe some people listening are like, they knew what they were fucking doing.

They knew the rules in Bali. It wasn't like the Balinese government sprung it on them and they were like, hey, we're changing the law. We're not going to execute you all. They did know that this was a risk. Yeah. I think the argument that a lot of people make is that had the heroin made it to its destination, it could have killed hundreds of people.

And that is an argument I'm not going to argue against because it is very true. So legal counsel, it's not something anyone tried particularly hard at. No one sort of tries to come up. I mean, what can you say? It was strapped to your body. And I don't want people to feel like we're just sort of dismissing the level of what these guys are doing because obviously drug smuggling, like heroin is not okay i'm not here to like no absolutely not the thing that we've always said on this podcast is that we are not pro death penalty for any crime absolutely and so i think my concern isn't that these people oh they're young and they don't know what they were doing and they blah blah blah they should

just be set free no they should be facing prison time because this is a very illegal, very terrible thing that they're doing. But I wouldn't be okay with the death penalty regardless of what they had done. And I think that that's the issue for me. And I understand that Bali is allowed to have its own rules and they knew what they were doing. They knew the risks because I do think they did know what they were doing, but it's still not great. Renee Lawrence, Martin Stevens, Michael Kuczyk and Scott Rush all claimed that they didn't know what was inside the packages strapped to their bodies and that they were afraid of Andrew Chan but they genuinely really truly thought that this scary man was going to pay them to go on holiday to Bali for 11 days

and expect absolutely nothing in return Andrew Chan, Muran Sukumaran, Matthew Norman, Siyi Chen and Tan Duc Tan Nguyen all had the same lawyer and the same defence, which was to flat out deny absolutely everything and claim total ignorance. In Indonesia, there are no juries, just between three to five judges who preside over a case. So deliberation times are short. And it doesn't seem like anything said in court was true.

So let's just skip to the sentencing part. There's no point just sitting here going over a bunch of like stories that are very implausible. Renee Lawrence, who was arguably the one who cooperated the most with the police, was sentenced to life, although it was commuted to 20 years later on, just like Chappelle Corby before her. Chappelle actually did Renee's makeup for her when she stood trial, and the two became friends in Karabakan. Although they are both perfectly aware that in the real world, they would go nowhere near each other because they are complete polar opposites.

Renee's travel companion and former colleague Martin Stevens, along with Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Yi, Tan, were all jailed for life without parole. And Andrew Chan was the first Australian in history to be sentenced to death in Indonesia. Sukumaran was the second. At sentencing, one of the judges reminded the court that had the heroin been exported to Australia,

there would have been over 8,000 victims. And Australia may not have been sympathetic towards the Bali Nine as a whole, but the death penalties did certainly bring about a shock. So much so that Kevin O'Rourke, the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties president, felt that he could not stand by and do nothing. I think that's the thing, isn't it? Because Australia doesn't have the death penalty. No. So that's the part that's shocking, is knowing that you are allowing citizens of your country to be caught and tried and prosecuted in a nation that has the death penalty when you yourself do not have it. Like if they were like, oh, well, if they'd have been tried here, it would have been the same exact thing.

Then I can kind of understand. That's the bit that's shocking to me. Kevin O'Rourke had had success in the past executing treaties between Thailand and Australia by which Australian citizens convicted of crimes would serve two to four years in Thailand and then be permitted to serve the rest of their sentence in an Australian prison. Indonesia, it is not Thailand. No, no it is not. But Kevin's hopeful, so he formed a legal lobby

to save the lives of Chan and Sukumaran and also he wanted to secure a prisoner exchange programme. Kevin and his team of 30 lawyers all worked pro bono and off the clock. They also kept the families of the Niners up to date and as supported as they possibly could. They were pretty hopeful that a treaty would be achieved. As relations between Australia and Indonesia have historically been pretty strong, Australia sends Indonesia a lot of aid, etc, etc.

And a lot of drunk tourists. Yes. But again, they, etc. And a lot of drunk tourists. Yes. But again, they were wrong. And so the Bali Nine all resign themselves to a life inside the overcrowded, rat infested and brimming with heroin Carabucan prison, aka Hotel K. Australian film crews have been allowed into the prison to interview the Nine on a few occasions and you can click the links below. The overcrowded rat infested vibe is not the impression of the prison that these Australian news crews present. The contemporary governor of the prison has been very vocal that his jail is not like it used to be in

the 90s. There's English classes and art studios and stuff. I don't believe it. I'm sure it's better. I'm sure it's better. I don't think it is as nice as those news reports make it look. And the Bali Nine do have it better than most. They have cleaner, bigger quarters and more comfortable mattresses, etc. So how bad could it really be? But if you watch them, there is this like haunted, no one home look in some, not all, I will say not all. Some of the Bali Nine have this like, especially the young ones who've, you know, become men inside this prison. There's nobody home. So I don't believe that it's not that bad. And I do wonder whether the positive-ish portrayal of

Kiribati prison by the Australian press may have been an attempt to appease Indonesian bureaucrats to elicit leniency for their citizens staring death in the face. So don't take our word for it. You can watch the interviews with some of the Bali Nine in the YouTube links below. And I understand again, that some of you may not feel sympathetic towards them. Some of you may. I don't know, it's for you to make up your own mind. I kind of flip flop between the two. I don't know how I feel about this case, because it's not a miscarriage of justice. It's not that. It's something else. And it's tricky to pin down how I feel about it, to be honest. But below in the links, you'll see that if you do watch the interviews, that Sukumaran doesn't seem

like an aggressive enforcer. He does seem quite gentle and soft-spoken. Again, we're not saying that that's not his role. We just don't know. We don't know. Because he never tells us. No, he never tells us. But what Sukumaran does say to camera is that he never thought of himself as a bad person, just a stupid one. And I think that's probably the reason that if anybody can get to the point of sympathy for these people is that they're probably not thinking through the actions that they're making. They're not thinking through the decisions that they're making. They're not thinking, oh, if I take this heroin that's strapped to my leg to Australia,

it's going to destroy a lot of lives. They're thinking this is quite an easy way to make some money. And I think it is probably ignorance, not nefarious. It's probably stupidity and not evil. Yeah, on my kindest days, that's what I think. Yes, I think that's on my kindest day, yeah. And Sukumaran used his time inside hotel k to build a garden and start a screen printing business doing what he can to make his time there better that's why these little like mini documentaries that the australian press make make you emote for them because he's just like he's just there

doing like digging his little garden and screen printing t-shirts and like you know english classes for the other inmates and is very soft-spoken and gentle but then you have to remind yourself what he did. Exactly and he claims continuously throughout these mini documentaries that he never sold drugs to anybody and that the whole drug smuggling operation was thought up by friends of his over dinner and that it had just seemed harmless. Sukumaran does caveat that comment though by saying that since he's been in prison, he has seen how truly fucked up heroin is. He seems gentle and even kind.

Do we think he's telling the truth? Not even close. In the same documentary, and I say documentary, it's a mini, like, 20 minutes, Andrew Chan seems charismatic. In his life before arrest, he admits that he was no upstanding member of society. He was never good at school or being a family man. And as a drug user himself, he fell in with a rough crowd. It's always the way, isn't it? You're never the instigator. You just fall,

you just, you know, you just meet the wrong person on the wrong day and then suddenly you're in prison in Bali. He did vehemently deny that he was the godfather of the trafficking operation. He tells the camera that he lived with his parents, so he's hardly a kingpin. And he even says, like, I had the shitty car, like, I'm not, you know. But, like, if I was a fucking drug kingpin or building my drug empire, I'd also lay low too. Like, drive a shit car and live with my parents.

Yeah. In Carribochan, Andrew Chan threw himself into the Christian faith, although he wasn't so keen to talk about that on camera because he was very aware of how sceptical people can be about jail yard conversions that didn't stop him from pulling at that thread in court he literally is like i'm in god's hands now like literally trying to play the christian angle which in indonesia is never going to get you that far but maybe he learned his lesson since then he was like people don't like it when you do that i'll just keep my mouth shut so it does seem like

andrew chan and sukum, when you watch them in these interviews, it looks like they've accepted their role and they're not flat out denying everything anymore. I just still don't think they're the top of the ladder. I really don't. I don't think Andrew Chan was the godfather. I don't know what Sukumaran was doing, but there are people above them, 100%. Sir Martin Stevens, the other member of the Bali Five, fell in love with a Javanese woman who was visiting the prison, and he rarely speaks to the press. Matthew Norman does, though.

He looks vacant and talks a lot about how all he wants to do is make it up to his family, and how he doesn't think they will ever forgive him for the pain that he's caused them. He shows the camera his mezzanine bedroom that he built himself. He can't stand up straight in it, but solitude is priceless in prison. He says that he has to stay positive for his family's sake. If he became morose and

unresponsive, then it would be much harder for them. Appeals were made by every member of the Bali Nine, and all of them, bar two, had their life sentences commuted to 20-year sentences. Renee Lawrence was released after serving 14 years. Chan and Sukumaran had no such luck. When any lawyer tried to argue that the death penalty for drug smuggling was unconstitutional, the Attorney General of Indonesia himself said, quote, Indonesia absolutely needs capital punishment if we do not have it. The fear is that Indonesia will give the wrong message to drug distributors and potential users. And as much as I do not agree with the death penalty, I obviously think it's for every country to make their own decision. And if the majority of people in that country are pro that, then who

am I to say they shouldn't be doing it? Which interestingly, they're not. Interesting, interesting. I looked at a poll and the poll is essentially, I think it's something like maybe 60% of Indonesians don't think there should be a death penalty at all for anything. Wow interesting. And then kind of the remainder are like it shouldn't be for drug smuggling. Fair enough and I think that with the drug smuggling stuff and people feeling like maybe this is very harsh punishment I do also understand Indonesia wanting to make an example of the Bali 9. And I understand also backtracking making it look like you're lenient now. Exactly. If these people, knowing that the death penalty was on the table for what they were doing, did it anyway, imagine if they backtrack and then other people are like, oh,

well, I'll just give it a go. The risk versus the reward. I've got some pepper powder. Like, let me just give it a shot. I do understand a country feeling like they can't back down. Again, it's very conflicting. According to the Attorney General Drug Smugglers, some pepper powder, like, let me just give it a shot. I do understand a country feeling like they can't back down. Again, it's very conflicting. According to the Attorney General, drug smugglers, users and dealers do not have the right to humane treatment. In Bali, those who are sentenced to death are taken from their cells in the middle of the night. Their families are informed a few days before

so that they can say their goodbyes. And when those who are about to die are taken from their cells, hoods are placed over their heads, and they're dressed in black aprons, sporting a red cross over their hearts. They're taken to an outdoor open space, sometimes even a golf course, where they're met by a 12-man firing squad.

Only two out of the 12 firearms contain live rounds to spare the consciences of the soldiers. And that's exactly what happened to Andrew Chan and Moiran Sukumaran on the 29th of April 2015. Six other men were killed that night, mostly foreigners, all convicted of drugs charges. No one thought it would really happen, but it did. Indonesia's drug policies have only got harsher. Only recently, President Joko Widowo instructed police to shoot on sight anyone they suspected of drug trafficking. In 2017, 79 suspects were killed in extrajudicial killings. So that's just being shot because you look a bit like a drug dealer, which is the same policy they have in the Philippines. Yeah, oh absolutely. Duarte is big on that. So Widowo

has also been hardline, executing 18 people convicted of drug trafficking in just three years. And it's what's kept him in power. There's a lot of articles about Widowo will come out with a new drug policy in the run up to an election, because there is no question that Indonesia does have a drug problem. And he is seen to be the hardest line on it. So he keeps getting reelected is the argument. But Indonesia's drug problem isn't going anywhere. It's reported to be the largest drug market in Asia with Jakarta being the worst of the lot.

The only data we could find on drug use in Indonesia is all pre-pandemic so we don't know how accurate it is now but the Indonesian Child Protection Commission stated that in 2018 that of the 87 million children in Indonesia 5.9 million had become drug addicts and 1.6 million had become drug dealers. I will caveat that slightly. In Indonesia, they do not have levels

of drugs like we do. So smoking a spliff is the same as injecting heroin sure so i don't know are they counting kids who smoke weed in the park in that 5.9 million i don't know i'm not saying there's not a problem i'm just saying we have to be aware that there is no categorization of drugs in indonesia so the problem isn't going anywhere it's getting worse it's not getting better so it doesn't look like the death penalty is doing anyone any favors and i am not going to wax lyrical about rehabilitation versus retribution for the hundredth time because you've all heard me go on about it for spillion years and we don't want to.

But cash prize to anyone who can give me a singular example of the war on drugs improving anything for anybody. No, and it's hard with this case as well because I feel like with people like this, like drug mules, it's not so much about the rehabilitation

versus the retribution argument. It's more about deterrence. I feel like that's what Bali or Indonesia are going for. It's like, we're not concerned about whether you're going to lead a better life and not do this kind of thing. It's about who else might take your place and continue to come here and peddle drugs, basically. Exactly. But to solve that problem, you have to make it not the biggest drug market in Indonesia, and you're not going to do that with retribution. Yeah. Well, I don't know what the right answer is either. You could even argue that imprisonment somewhere like Karabakan

is probably the worst possible thing that could happen to an addict. Because drugs are everywhere, they're easy to get, and there's not much else going on to pass the time. So it is tricky, because I agree with you. There is no world in which they did not know what they were doing. No, not at all. That's why this case, the Bali Nine, the name itself kind of sounds like so many other cases

that make it seem like it was a miscarriage of justice. And that is not what this is. And they knew what they were doing. And I think lying when they were in court, all of those things probably aggravated people more because they were like, you're not even cooperating. You're continuing to tell the story that is completely implausible. They didn't help themselves in any way. I think, like we said, in my most generous mood, I could say they were

incredibly naive. Short of that, I would say they willfully, for money, did actions that could have caused misery, pain and suffering to thousands of people. And so what is the correct punishment for that? I don't like the death penalty for anything. But I also understand Bali and Indonesia in general, or any country in general, wanting to keep drugs out of their nation. How you do that, I don't know if this is the right, this is not the right answer, ethically or morally speaking, I mean, the right answer, literally speaking, like, does it actually achieve your end goal? But I don't know what the right thing to do is. So it's hard. I don't know.

I feel bad for anybody who gets the death penalty, but I feel like, what were you thinking? Yeah. Yeah. So that's that. There you go. The Bali Nine and Karibak in prison. Bali's nice.

Go to Indonesia. Absolutely. Go to Indonesia. Don't smuggle drugs. And don't leave your bag unattended. That is the biggest. Put a lock on that bag. Don't let it out of your fucking sight.

Quite. What was it? Like, don't look in barrels that aren't yours. Don't even look in barrels that are yours because somebody might have put a body in there while you weren't looking. Stay away from barrels. Don't put your bag anywhere that anyone could put a body or a fucking sugar bag full of heroin in it. Don't let anyone tape anything to your body and of heroin in it. Yeah, don't let anyone tape anything to your body

and get on a plane. No, don't. Bad idea. Because it's definitely not, not heroin. God. Oh, God. And don't go on holiday

if somebody tells you they're going to send you to Bali for free. Yeah, yes. Hot tip. Because you will end up murdered by the state. Right, exactly.

So be careful out there. Yeah. And we'll see you next time for something else probably. Bye. Or maybe not, maybe I quit. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted

to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha

exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face-to-face with them.

Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows,

uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.