Ironic twist as Bali Nine members leave Darwin and head home to their families for Christmas

The remaining members of the Bali Nine have been escorted from Darwin to their home states by Australian Federal Police officers – the law enforcement agency infamous for their two-decades-long incarceration in a foreign hellhole.

Smugglers Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Michael Czugaj, Martin Stephens and Si Yi Chen have all left the Howard Springs Accommodation Village near Darwin where they have spent the past four days after landing in Australia on Sunday. 

Czugaj was seen boarding a Brisbane-bound plane early on Friday morning with a phalanx of heavily-armed AFP officers attempting to hide him from waiting media.

AFP officers reportedly threatened a journalist from The Australian with ‘further action’ if any photographs were taken inside the terminal, despite there being no law against the practice. 

Ironically, it was the AFP who tipped off their Indonesian counterparts about the group’s plans to smuggle 8.3kg heroin out of Denpasar Airport back to Australia in April 2005.

The infamous group ended up spending 20 years in an Indonesian cell, some with the death penalty hanging over their heads.

Czugaj, who was wearing dark glasses, a white face mask, a cap and a blue collared shirt, refused to speak to media after landing in Brisbane.

He was seen walking arm-in-arm with a blonde female relative who tried to push cameras away as they left the airport.

‘Where’s dad’s car, is dad’s the white one?’, Czugaj could be heard saying.

Meanwhile, Matthew Norman and Si Yi Chen reportedly arrived at Gate 10 in Melbourne Airport at 6.50am on Friday where they were greeted by a small group of family members. 

Neither commented to waiting media.

Norman is set to move into a $4million waterfront mansion in the seaside town of Torquay – a major switch-up from the squalid Bali prison cell he used to call home.  

Martin Stephens flew to Sydney where he was also assisted by AFP officers. 

In 2005, Lee Rush, father of jailed Bali Nine member Scott Rush, contacted the Australian Federal Police requesting they stop his son from leaving Australia, desperate to prevent him from getting involved in any drug activity.

The AFP forwarded that information to Indonesian authorities who pounced on the group and arrested them at the airport. 

Rush’s lawyer claimed in 2005 that the AFP had abandoned promises to stop the group from leaving Australia, instead letting them fly to a country that they knew could execute the smugglers.

Subsequent arrests at Bali’s Denpasar Airport and other locations in Indonesia saw the plot foiled, and ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death. Both were executed by firing squad in April 2015. 

In the same year, the AFP denied moral complicity in that sentence, saying Indonesian authorities were acting on more information about the group than just the tip-off from the worried dad.

‘I want to take the pressure off Scott Rush’s father,’ then AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin said at a press conference.

‘A lot of the way it’s been reported is that his tip-off led to this. It didn’t. I feel for Mr Rush that it’s been portrayed that way.

‘The AFP was already aware of, and had commenced investigating, what we believed was a syndicate that was actively recruiting couriers to import narcotics to Australia at the time of Mr Rush’s contact with the AFP.’

Commissioner Colvin also insisted there had not been enough evidence to arrest the Bali Nine members before they left Australia, and that allowing them to travel exposed the wider syndicate.

‘At the time, we were working with a very incomplete picture. We didn’t know everybody involved, we didn’t know all the plans, or even what the illicit commodity was likely to be,’ Commissioner Colvin said.

He said it was ‘operationally appropriate’ for the AFP to then cooperate with, and seek help from Indonesia.

Commissioner Colvin said it was beyond their jurisdiction to request Indonesian authorities allow the drug couriers to fly back to Australia and arrest them there.

‘This is the harsh reality for Australians who go overseas and become involved in serious crimes,’ he said.

Then AFP Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan indicated that the AFP needed more information about the wider syndicate.

‘To let them come back through to Australia, we may have grabbed a couple of mules, but we would not have been able to have any evidence in relation to the wider syndicate,’ he said.

However Mr Phelan admitted he felt conflicted about handing the information to the Indonesians.

‘I’ve agonised over it for 10 years now, and every time I look back, I still think it’s a difficult decision,’ he said.

‘But given what I knew at that particular time, and what our officers knew, I would take a lot of convincing to make a different decision.

‘I’ve seen the misery that drugs causes to tens of thousands of families in this country.’

Mr Phelan said he was under no illusion about what handing over the information could mean. 

‘Yes, I knew full well that by handing over the information and requesting surveillance and requesting evidence gathered, if they found them in possession of drugs they would take action and expose them to the death penalty,’ he said.

‘I knew that, I went in with an open mind.’

Of the other Bali Nine members arrested in the original bust, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died from cancer in 2018, while Renae Lawrence was released that year after her life sentence was reduced to 20 years on appeal.