Indonesia to send Bali Nine prisoners home after PM’s request

The five remaining Bali Nine convicts will be transferred to Australia as soon as next month, following a direct request from Anthony Albanese to new president Prabowo Subianto this week.

Bali Nine member Matthew Norman pictured inside Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Jail. Picture: Zul Edoardo

The five remaining Bali Nine convicts serving life sentences in Indonesia for drug trafficking will be transferred to Australia as soon as next month, following a direct request from Anthony Albanese to new president Prabowo Subianto on the sidelines of this month’s APEC conference in Peru.

Co-ordinating minister for legal affairs, human rights, immigration and corrections Yusril Ihza Mahendra told The Weekend Australian that while Indonesia did not yet have prisoner exchange laws, the transfer could be made under the framework of ­mutual legal assistance.

“In Peru, the Australian Prime Minister made the request for the transfer of Australian prisoners with President Prabowo,” Mr Mahendra said on Friday.

“The Indonesia President responded that they are currently ­reviewing and processing the ­matter, and it is expected to be ­carried out in December.”

When asked to clarify if that meant all five of the remaining Bali Nine convicts – Matthew Norman, Martin Stephens, Si Yi Chen, Scott Rush and Michael Czugaj – he confirmed that the transfer would occur next month.

Scott Rush, pictured in 2014.

Martin Stephens.

The minister, appointed last month after Mr Prabowo took office, told The Weekend Australian that he had also received a request from Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on November 7 that “Australian nationals convicted of drug offences and serving sentences in various prisons be transferred to Australia”.

Michael Czugaj in 2010.

Si Yi Chen in 2017. Picture: AAP

“We are using the same approach as in the case of Mary Jane from The Philippines,” he added, referring to Philippines woman Mary Jane Veloso who has been on Indonesia’s death row since 2010 after she allegedly became an unwitting drug courier.

Ms Veloso was scheduled to be executed by firing squad in 2015 alongside alleged Bali Nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuram Sukamaran but was granted a last-minute reprieve.

Philippines president Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos junior announced a transfer deal had been struck with Jakarta on his ­social media page, writing: “Mary Jane Veloso is coming home”.

The announcement has raised speculation the deal could be part of a prisoner swap that would see Gregor Johan Haas, the father of NRL star Payne Haas, transferred to Indonesia to face drug smuggling charges related to the December importation of meth­amphetamines from Mexico that would normally potentially warrant the death penalty.

Indonesian authorities have already promised the Australian government they would take the death penalty off the table if Mr Haas was extradited to Jakarta from The Philippines, where he was arrested in May on an Interpol Red Notice and is being held on local criminal charges.

But Mr Mahendra said Mr Haas was “not an Indonesian citizen and his status is not that of a prisoner but rather a person who is on the red notice list”.

The nine young Australians known as the Bali Nine were arrested in April 2005 and convicted and sentenced to punishments ranging from life imprisonment to the death penalty for attempting to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia and back to Australia.

The only woman, Renae Lawrence, was released in 2018 after her life sentence was successfully reduced to 20 years on appeal.