Pictured in prison: Sara Connor’s new role in Bali jail
NEW details have emerged of life in a Bali jail for Australian prisoner Sara Connor, two years into her five-year sentence over the death of a local policeman.
Behind the Scenes
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BYRON Bay woman Sara Connor, jailed in Bali for her role in the death of a police officer, is now a leader in the women’s jail at Kerobokan.
Connor is one of 13 prisoner leaders in the women’s jail, which now houses 233 female prisoners, including 14 foreigners.
Prison officials say Connor spends her time working in the jail’s kitchen and she also makes handicrafts and does yoga.
Connor is two years into her five-year jail sentence for her role in the death of Bali police officer Wayan Sudarsa, whose bloodied and battered body was found on a Kuta beach in the early hours of August 17, 2016.
Connor has two young boys with her former husband, Anthony “Twig” Connor and they have visited since she was jailed.
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In the kitchen, Connor is one of five leaders supervising the cooking — starting work at 4am, cooking 45kg of rice and cutting up vegetables.
A prison source said Connor’s children and ex husband had visited about three months ago and that Connor was delighted to see them.
Connor was working at the jail kitchen when News Corp attended a training event inside the jail this week for prisoners involved in landscaping and construction training.
Fifty-one of the female prisoners were involved in the training, held at 12 different jails across Indonesia this week and involving a total of 1000 prisoners.
The women at Kerobokan were the only female prisoners involved in the program.
The women’s jail at Kerobokan has a new governor, Lili, a native of South Sumatra.
She was formerly an official in the Law and Human Rights Ministry in Jakarta working in the section involved in training and promoting skills for prisoners.
“Every morning I walk around the prison, visiting every room, to say hello to all of them, shaking hands with all of them. As long as they are well and happy, I feel happy,” Lili said of the female prisoners.
“All prisoners call me ‘mamma’. They said that I am their mamma.”
“I just try to be always approaching them, talking to them. I never feel bored to give them knowledge.”
Connor is currently due to be released from jail in 2021 but is expected to earn sentence remissions each year which will bring her release date forward.
Together with her former boyfriend, British DJ David Taylor, Connor was convicted of group violence causing death for the attack on the officer.
Connor was originally sentenced to four years jail but this was increased on appeal to five years, after the appeal court found the original sentence had failed to take account of two aggravating factors — that Connor had left the victim to die on the beach that night and had not sought help for him and that the crime had damaged Bali’s tourism image.
Doctors had testified that the officer, who was bashed about the head with a beer bottle, his own binoculars and a mobile phone, lived for several hours after the couple left him on the beach and he may have survived had medical help been sought.
Prosecutors had originally sought eight years in jail for Connor.
Taylor was sentenced to six years in jail after admitting the attack, but testifying it was in self-defence.
Murder charges against Connor and Taylor were not pursued.
The couple is now estranged in jail and sources say they no longer speak.