CNN
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The remaining five Australian members of the notorious Bali Nine heroin trafficking ring have returned home after the City of Canberra reached an agreement with Indonesia to end their 20-year imprisonment overseas.
“I am pleased to confirm that Australian nationals Mr Shi Yi Chen, Mr Michael Chugai, Mr Matthew Norman, Mr Scott Rush and Mr Martin Stevens have returned to Australia this afternoon.” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote in Sunday’s X.
The five men, who are serving life sentences, are part of a wider group of nine people who were arrested in 2005 while attempting to smuggle more than eight kilograms of luggage into Australia from Bali’s international airport.
The failure of the plan has been a point of tension between the two countries for years, and the Australian government has advocated for both countries’ return for decades.
Indonesia executed the group’s Australian ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2015, with then-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott calling it a “dark moment in relations”.
According to Reuters, Albanese filed the man’s lawsuit against Indonesia’s newly installed president, Prabowo Subianto, on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru last month. Indonesia’s justice minister confirmed at the time that he had agreed to repatriate the remaining members, the agency said.
“I would like to thank President Prabowo Subianto for his compassion,” Ms. Albanese wrote on Sunday X.
According to Nine News, five members are currently scheduled to be released.
In a separate joint statement with the Albanians and Home Secretary Tony Burke on Sunday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said “the men will have the opportunity to continue their personal rehabilitation and reintegration in Australia”.
The Bali Nine were arrested by Indonesian police in 2005 after being tipped off by Australian authorities.
Four of them were arrested at Denpasar International Airport with over eight kilograms of heroin strapped to their bodies, and another four were found in a hotel on Kuta Island. Chan, one of the ringleaders, was arrested after boarding a flight to Sydney.
Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death, but the other seven were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment after appeal.
Renae Lawrence, the group’s only female member, was released in 2018 after serving 13 years of a 20-year sentence. Lawrence was initially sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was later commuted to 20 years and he was released early for good behavior.
Another member, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, died of kidney cancer while in custody in 2018, Nine News reported.
The Bali Nine case highlights the harshness of Indonesia’s drug trafficking laws, with several foreign nationals currently being detained in the country on similar charges.
