How two decades of prison hell has taken its toll on the Bali Nine – with one unrecognisable from the fresh-faced youth locked up 19 years ago
They have come home aged beyond their years after almost two decades incarcerated in squalid Indonesian jails, some with the threat of death hanging over them.
The five freed Bali Nine traffickers look more like their fathers, with one of them, Scott Rush, unrecognisable from the handsome, fresh-faced youth locked up in 2005.
The five men now face a long rehabilitation after years of an institutionalised existence in which they were told when and what to do, where to go and if they were allowed to speak.
Their learned obedience behind bars comes at a high risk of enduring trauma, given that all five saw two of their original co-accused taken off and shot dead by firing squad.
Rush, who is now aged in his late 30s, perhaps looks the most aged of all the Bali Nine because for years he had the threat of execution hanging over his head too, until his death sentence was commuted.
The five freed Bali Nine plotters, from left: Martin Stephens, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Matthew Norman and Siu Yi Chen watch on as their releases are signed off by Australian and Indonesians officials
Scott Rush, 19, was expelled in Year 10 for a drug incident from a private Catholic boys school and was convicted in Brisbane of drug possession months before his arrest in Bali with 1.3kg of heroin strapped to his body
Michael Czugaj, then 19, quit his job as a glazier in Brisbane and flew to Bali where days later he was arrested at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar with 1.75kg of heroin concealed on his body
Newly-freed Martin Stephens begged at the time of the 2015 executions of ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan: ‘Just take me out the back and shoot me.’
A despairing Stephens said that if there was no hope of release or redemption, it was more humane to execute him.
‘Isn’t 20 years a bad enough penalty? But life means no hope. It means I will die in prison. Can you imagine having to live like that?
‘When I think about waking up like that every day, I think it would be better if they took me out the back and put a bullet in the back of my head.’
Stephens would wait another nine years to walk from prison at the age of 48.
He is the oldest of the eight men and one woman who – aged 18 to 28 – threw away their lives on the promise of a quick buck in return for being a heroin mule.
What changed was that in 2015 – when 14 death-row drug offenders were shot dead along with Chan and Sukumaran – President Joko Widodo led Indonesia.
The October 24 election this year of the more moderate regime of President Prabowo Subianto allowed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to swiftly do a deal.
Aged 18, 18 and 20, Michael Czugaj, Matthew Norman and Si Yi Chen are arrested for heroin at Denpasar airport in the grim beginning of their 19 year ordeal
On Sunday, Indonesia freed Stephens, Si Yi Chen, Michael Czugaj, Rush and Matthew Norman.
After boarding a Jetstar flight to Darwin, the men were reportedly taken to the one-time Covid quarantine facility at Howard Springs.
When and how they will resume life in Australia remains to be seen, but these are now men with receding hairlines, paunches, wrinkles and stress lines who are going home to live with mum and dad.
So who are the ‘Bali Five’ now back in Australia?
MATTHEW JAMES NORMAN
Norman was just 18-years-old and keen to get his hands on ‘easy cash, fast cash’ when he was approached and offered $15,000 for a drug trafficking job.
He left school aged 16 because he wanted to work and make money rather than finish his HSC.
He later told ABC News that he had been ‘reckless, callous, wanted to cut corners in life’.
Just a naive teenager when he was first locked up in Kerobokan jail, Norman learnt his incarceration had a serious effect on his family back home. One of his sisters became anorexic, another was harassed and his parents received hate mail.
One of just two of the original Bali Nine who remained in Kerobokan until his release, Norman designed T-shirts, bags and posters and kept on applying for a sentence reduction.
But he admitted that every day was ‘just a struggle to keep doing good things’ amid the ‘chaos’ of prison.
Matthew Norman sits between Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen and Si Yi Chen of Sydney in a Denpasar District Courtroom for their sentencing in 2006. Nguyen later died of cancer in custody
He has seen one fellow inmate hang himself, and others go ‘mental … crazy’ and ‘I can’t fall into that’.
‘We are not getting any younger. It would be good to go home soon and start our lives again … start fresh,’ Norman said back in 2015.
SCOTT RUSH
Rush grew up in Brisbane’s west and attended private Catholic boys’ school St Laurence’s College from which he was expelled in Year 10 for a drug incident. He reportedly began smoking cannabis aged 15 and used ecstasy and prescription drugs.
Five months before his Bali arrest, in December 2004, Rush pleaded guilty at Inala Magistrates Court to 16 offences including drug possession, fraud, theft and drink-driving.
A warrant for his arrest in Australia was outstanding at the time of his trip to Bali, relating to $4796.95 allegedly stolen from an Australian bank.
Rush, 19, and his Brisbane friend, Michael Czugaj, 18, met Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen in a Fortitude Valley hotel.
Scott Rush with his parents Christine and Lee at Bali Police Headquarters just days after his April 2005 arrest
Nguyen offered them a free holiday to Bali, and Rush a mobile phone.
Rush’s father Lee learnt what his son was up to after his departure and alerted the Australian Federal Police in the hope that he could be stopped.
The AFP alerted the Indonesia police who swooped on the group, although the AFP later denied Rush’s father was responsible for triggering their actions.
In prison, Rush has struggled with drugs and had several romances.
In May 2011, Rush reportedly planned to marry an American girlfriend, Karen Hermiz, and in 2014 London banker, Nikki Butler.
In 2010 while on death row, Rush was reportedly circumcised in the musholla (prayer space) of Kerobokan prison by a visitor in clandestine ceremony, an alleged effort to convert to Islam.
He allegedly changed his name to ‘Scott Sulaiman’.
However, Rush afterwards maintained that he was a Christian and that he underwent the procedure for ‘health reasons’.
A visiting psychiatrist later described Rush as ‘anxious, thought disordered and confused’, and that his actions were categorised as symptomatic of ‘death row phenomenon’.
‘He is an anxious, lonely and terrified young man. He is trying to find understanding in a world that no longer makes sense,’ the unnamed psychiatrist said.
After his death penalty was transmuted to a life sentence, Rush was transferred at his request to a prison in Karangasem, East Bali, in 2014 in order ‘to improve himself’.
MICHAEL WILLIAM CZUGAJ
Before going to Bali, Czugaj was an apprentice glazier, keen surfer, and one of eight children born to Polish-Australian parents living in Oxley, Brisbane.
He was also a minor criminal who had 14 convictions for offences including train fare evasion, wilful damage, drink-driving and receiving stolen property.
Between 2003 and his April 2005 Bali arrest, Czugaj appeared on several occasions in Brisbane Magistrates Court.
He left his job as a glazier in March 2005, telling his family that he was going to Cairns for a holiday. Czugaj’s parents said he was a ‘problem child’ but had never been in serious trouble and had no drug history.
Michael Czugaj in a holding cell at the Denpasar court in Bali (left) with Martin Stephens (right) and being visited by their mothers, Vicki Czugaj and Michelle Stephens while awaiting their sentencing
His father, Steven, had no idea that his son had a passport, saying ‘the kid’s got no money … this must have all been arranged, I don’t know how or by whom’.
While in Kerobokan prison, Czugaj studied business management behind bars and had a relationship with girlfriend Lena, a beautician.
His mother, Vicki, visited him each year, travelling from Brisbane and staying for two weeks to see her son.
SI YI CHEN
Chen had just turned 20 when he was approached in Brisbane to take part in the Bali heroin drug plot.
He had moved from China to Australia at the age of 12 and was a shy boy fearful of being mocked for his Chinese accent.
His family was typical traditional Chinese, hard working, strict, and insistent he stay home and study.
By his late teens however, Chen was ‘stubborn’ with a ‘huge ego’ and rebelled against his father by refusing to go to university.
The remaining Bali 9 drug traffickers were haunted by the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran (above, one of their coffins), especially Scott Rush who had also been sentenced to die
He argued with his parents and moved out of home and in with friends, the ABC reported.
But he needed money and believed he would ‘always get away with it’ because he was young.
His father blamed himself for Si Yi taking part in the Bali Nine plot.
Bali’s Kerobokan jail where the Bali 9 spent half their lives in squalid conditions
In Kerobokan Prison, Chen started Mule Jewels, a silver jewellery-making program in partnership with a local company which trained inmates in silversmithing.
He practised tai chi, meditation and reportedly became a Christian.
In 2015, Chen told the ABC the deaths of Chan and Sukumaran by the firing squad was like losing family members.
‘I feel I’m still alive and they’re not and also feel disappointed and (it) also affected my mindset at that time, like, what’s the point?’ he said.
He planned to become a counsellor to troubled young adults if he was ever released.
MARTIN ERIC STEPHENS
Stephens, from Towradgi, south of Sydney, worked as a bartender at Eurest, a catering company, along with other Bali Nine members Renae Lawrence and Matthew Norman.
Their supervisor was Andrew Chan, who presented the heroin smuggling plan to the three.
What Chan didn’t reveal was that he was also involved in two other heroin smuggling operations, one out of Brisbane and another from Hong Kong to Sydney.
All would come unstuck, but on April 6, 2005 Stephens and Lawrence left Australia.
Martin Stephens marries Indonesian woman Christine Winarni Puspayanti in 2011 behind bars inside Kerobokan jail
Their baggage was packed with sealable plastic bags, medical tape, elastic waist bands and bike shorts supplied the day before by Sukumaran.
Eleven days later, they strapped heroin to their bodies, covered the drugs with waist bands or bike shorts and large tourist shirts, and made their last free but fateful trip to the airport.
Just months after his arrest, Stephens met Indonesian woman Christine Winarni Puspayanti, who was visiting Kerobokan jail as part of a church group.
He proposed to her in late 2006 and the pair married in Kerobokan in a traditional Indonesian-style wedding in April 2011.
However in 2014, Stephens and Bali Nine cohort, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, were accused of violating prison rules and transferred to a prison 400km away in Malang, East Java.
