Remaining Bali Nine members could be home in time for Christmas
The five remaining members of the Bali Nine could be transferred to Australia as soon as next month after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese directly lobbied new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
The two leaders met earlier this month on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Peru, where Albanese raised the cases of the five men, Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens and Si Yi Chen, who are in prisons on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Java.
Australians Matthew Norman, right, Si Yi Chen, centre and Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen in court during their trial in Denpasar, Bali in October 2005.Credit: AP
It was not the first time Albanese had raised with Prabowo the fate of the five men, who are serving life sentences after being arrested in 2005 for attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia.
Albanese had also privately lobbied Prabowo’s predecessor, Joko Widodo, to secure the men’s freedom.
Securing their release is a major coup for the Albanese government, which has already secured the release of economist Sean Turnell from a jail in Myanmar, journalist Cheng Lei from China and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the United Kingdom.
An Australian government source confirmed the five men would return to Australia, but declined to comment further.
Michael Czugaj, right, and Matthew Norman, left, arrive at Denpasar District Court, Bali, in December 2005.Credit: AP
The ringleaders of the Bali Nine, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were executed by the Indonesian government in April 2015, soon after Widodo came to office. Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died from cancer in June 2018, while Renae Lawrence was released from prison in November 2018 after having her sentence commuted.
The Australian newspaper reported on Friday evening that Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesia’s co-ordinating minister for legal affairs, human rights, immigration and corrections, had said that his country did not yet have prisoner exchange laws, but that the transfer could be made under the framework of mutual legal assistance.
