Coronavirus to keep freed Melbourne promoter David Van Iersel in Bali
Like cocaine Cassie, jailed Melbourne nightclub booster David Van Iersel is soon set to be released into a world gripped by pandemic. But after a year behind Balinese bars, it means he unlikely to leave the island any time soon.
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Cocaine Cassie isn’t the only Australian drug offender to be given a get-out-of-jail card only to find themselves unable to come home.
Melbourne nightclub booster David Van Iersel will find himself in the same unenviable situation as Cassie Sainsbury when he walks out of Bali’s notorious Kerobokan prison next week.
Drug mule Sainsbury has been released from prison in Columbia after serving three years of a six-year sentence.
At least, infamous Bali drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s bodyguard John McLeod will be on hand at Van Iersel’s release from the jail not so affectionately known as Hotel K.
McLeod told Page 13 that Australian prisoners were usually deported after serving their sentence.
But coronavirus travel restrictions mean Van Iersel may have to stay on the holiday island for the foreseeable future.
It won’t feel like much of a vacay. The normally bustling island is in lockdown because of COVID-19.
Van Iersel and fellow nightclub promoter William Cabantog were arrested in July after 1.12 grams of cocaine was found in a police raid on the Lost City nightclub where Van Iersel worked as a manager in tourist hotspot Canggu.
After their arrest, each man tested positive.
The pair faced a maximum 12 years in prison with their sentences reduced after prosecutors agreed they were “victims of the drug trade.”
Cabantog, 36, was sentenced to a year minus time served. Van Iersel, 38, was jailed for nine months.
Bodyguard McLeod said Van Iersel was a “model prisoner” in Hotel K.
“He has complied, even though deep in his mind he is innocent,” McLeod told Page 13.
“He has done Australia proud, not by getting caught with drugs, but because of his behaviour and mental outlook. He is helping other people in there. He has done great work.
“Keep in mind the bloke had nothing in his possession and for him to go to jail was just a little bit off.
“He was literally in the worst place at the worst time the poor bugger.
“But he understands and I’ve spoken to him that he has to let that go. Mentally he is doing okay.”
A former policeman, McLeod, runs private security agency Tora Solutions and shielded Schapelle Corby from the media pack that followed her release from Kerobokan prison.
He still calls the Corby sisters friends (who can forget Mercedes) and said Van Iersel’s release would be “a more scaled down affair” to the Corby circus.
McLeod said Van Iersel has been looked after in prison by Bali 9 drug runner Matthew Norman, the unofficial spiritual leader of Aussies holed up inside Hotel K.
Norman, the youngest of the Bali 9, was a baby-faced 17-year-old in 2005 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Bali Nine ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed by firing squad in 2015.
McLeod said in Indonesia, “life means life” and without a sentence reduction, Norman might never be released.
“Matty leads them,” McLeod said. “They look to him for guidance. That poor bloke has done 17 years in there and doesn’t even have an out date.”
McLeod says Norman is considered a “rehabilitated” prisoner and petitions Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo each year for his sentence to be reduced.
The relationship between Van Israel and Cabantog is fractured with the pair keeping their distance from one another.
But distance is a problem in Hotel K where McLeod says there are grave fears of COVID-19 spreading through the prison population.
Kerobokan has an official capacity of 352 inmates but this often blows out to 1,600.
McLeod says social distancing is impossible, with prisoners taking turns to sleep on cardboard inside their crammed cells.
McLeod said there are fears of a riot if the virus spreads.
Prisoners were on edge and many Australian prisoners were “feeling deserted” by the Australian Consulate.
“It’s a time bomb,” said McLeod.
Tick, tick, tick!
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