By Amilia Rosa and Sherryn Groch
Moments before a deadly ambush unfolded inside a luxury Bali villa, an Australian stopped on the street to buy cigarettes.
CCTV footage would capture the same man soon after alongside two other Australians as they dumped a car in a neighbouring district, and then leapt into a white SUV to drive out of Bali to Jakarta.
Sydney plumber Darcy Francesco Jenson was nabbed at the border and arrested by Indonesian police on Monday.
Indonesian police are retracing the movements of three Australians accused of murder over a shooting that left one Melbourne man dead and another, with underworld links, seriously injured on the usually quiet holiday island.
Their arrests this week have also sent diplomats from Australia scrambling to piece together how a clutch of Australians far from home came to be at the centre of one of the most violent gangland shootings in Bali’s history.
The Age can reveal that almost two weeks before Saturday’s targeted attack, one of the accused trio rented a motorbike in the area, which he had delivered to him at a hotel roughly 10 minutes from the crime scene, in Pererenan.
The shop in Bali where one of the alleged attackers stopped to buy cigarettes.Credit: Amilia Rosa
The man returned the bike the night before the shooting, according to the rental company owner, but refused to hand over his passport, which is normal procedure in Bali for hiring vehicles. He paid in cash with no receipt. “I kept asking for the passport and he said he’d bring it in to show me, but he never did,” the owner told this masthead.
The next day, police swarmed the local shop, as a manhunt for the shooters in the villa ambush put the island on high alert, seizing CCTV and records. The owner’s testimony helped detectives close in on the alleged gunmen, as did the accused men’s cigarette shopping, according to sources and local press in Bali.
Sanar Ghanim, a kickboxer with known underworld ties, after being shot in Bali on Saturday night.Credit: Instagram
Zivan “Stipe” Radmanovic, 32, died in a hail of bullets in a late-night ambush last weekend when two men wearing helmets burst into his rented villa in Munggu, in the Badung district, and then fled on motorbikes.
Also shot and beaten was Sanar Ghanim, 34, the former partner of Danielle Stephens, who is the stepdaughter of slain underworld figure Carl Williams.
Police say the three Australians accused of the shooting bought a sledgehammer to break their way into the villa, and rented two other motorbikes from a different store in the area for their getaway. They then allegedly used and dumped two cars to get out of Bali, before trying to flee the country to Cambodia via Singapore.
Paea I Middlemore Tupou was detained overseas and flown back into Bali to face investigators.
One man, 27-year-old Sydney plumber Darcy Francesco Jenson, only made it as far as Jakarta airport before border officials swooped. A day later, 23-year-old convicted drug dealer Mevlut Coskun was detained in Singapore, and Paea I Middlemore Tupou, 26, was nabbed in Cambodia, with the help of Interpol. All three have now been brought back to Bali and charged with premeditated murder, police said, as well as the “embezzlement” or theft of several rental vehicles.
The Australian government said it is “urgently seeking further information from local authorities” after the arrests of the Australian men, who could face the death penalty if tried and convicted in Indonesia.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia always opposed the death penalty and her department was now seeking a briefing from Jakarta and “providing some consular assistance” to the men.
Bali police say the attack was targeted and planned, with others “likely” involved, and they will investigate a possible connection to Melbourne’s gangland wars.
Ghanim, a former kickboxer with known underworld associates, had been in Bali for a few months, staying with Radmanovic, their partners, and another person at the villa. More than a decade ago in Melbourne, he served jail time for his involvement in two non-fatal shootings, as well as drug offences.
The three Australians now being questioned by Indonesian detectives do not appear to be major players in the underworld back home, according to sources in Australia, though Sydneysiders Jenson and Coskun have racked up some small-time criminal offences.
A local Bali lawyer who said he was soon expecting to act for Tupou told reporters he was asking police to urgently release “the chains that attach on the foot of our future client because it’s really hurt on his feet currently”. Tupou was seen arriving in Bali, bound by the hands and ankles to a wheelchair on Tuesday night after being arrested in Cambodia.
Mevlut Coskun is one of the three Australians arrested and brought back to Bali.
After the attack, Ghanim was rushed to hospital with bullets still embedded in his body. The Melbourne man was released on Sunday with a bandaged leg, though police said he had yet to cooperate with investigators as he recovered.
Radmanovic’s wife said she had been woken by gunfire and her husband’s screams just after midnight Saturday in their locked villa. As she hid terrified under the bedcovers, she saw one man shoot Radmanovic in the bathroom.
Other witnesses reported that at least one of the men had spoken in an Australian accent, complaining his bike wouldn’t start, before fleeing the scene, and the men’s voices were also caught by CCTV in the area.
The two bikes allegedly used in the ambush were part of evidence seized by Bali police.Credit: Amilia Rosa
On Thursday, police closed the gates of their Badung headquarters against a growing press throng as they pored over evidence, though Australian consulate staff were seen visiting the men detained.
In the Indonesian legal system, being named a suspect or “tersangka” is the equivalent of being charged with a crime, ahead of a formal case being handed to prosecutors. Bali police earlier said they could ask their Australian counterparts for assistance only once suspects had been named.
Local Bali police closed their headquarters against a growing press pack on Thursday as investigations continue.Credit: Amilia Rosa
The Australian Federal Police would not comment on whether Indonesia had now requested its co-operation, but said no one had been arrested in Australia over the Bali ambush.
Any request for cooperation by Indonesia would trigger a tightly controlled process in Australia, governed by long-standing federal police guidelines on crimes that carry the death penalty, an AFP spokesman said earlier.
With Sally Rawsthorne
Know more? Get in touch s.groch@nine.com.au
Police inside the luxury villa where the ambush unfolded in Badung, Bali.Credit: AP