Hotel Kerobokan (35 page)

It was like a shock, trauma. It was, like, leave everyone we know. We have friends. I know everyone in there. Kerobokan felt like home after three years. Then move.

– Juri

Kerobokan is not really a prison – it’s a place to kidnap people and rip them off. It’s place for making money. This is why they don’t fix anything, why the walls are always falling down, why we have to fix our own toilet or be sick. A place that is about ripping people off is not going to pay for anything.

The whole justice system is simple – it’s nothing to do with punishment or rehabilitation. It doesn’t matter what evidence you have in court, it’s not about the evidence, it’s about money. They don’t even look at the evidence. That’s why someone with 12,000 ecstasy tablets, like Steve from England, gets three years in jail, and some poor local gets four years for one or two tablets. The whole system, from the courts to jail, is to make money. It’s not to fight against narcotics. That’s just an excuse.

– Mick

You feel you’re dead when you’re breathing in Kerobokan. You’re always looking for tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

– Inmate

Thomas

After leaving Hotel K, Thomas was taken to the immigration offices for his third deportation. This time though, the authorities were insisting that he flew back to Europe and not take the short flight to Bangkok. But Thomas had other ideas. Before leaving Hotel K, he’d teed it up with a friend to help him escape from the Denpasar immigration offices. So the moment the police were upstairs playing a game of cards, Thomas sprinted outside, leaped on the back of the waiting motorbike and tore off. The friend took him to a bus stop, and within a day of his release, he was back in Jakarta, living in the shadows and looking over his shoulder.

Within no time, Thomas was dealing again. But his snakes and ladders career would soon take its biggest hit. First he was busted for possession of few grams of heroin and sentenced to eighteen months in Cipinang Jail – his fourth stretch in an Indonesian prison. Then he crashed hard. He was busted dealing more than half a kilo of
shabu
from his cell.

It was a former friend and fellow ex-Hotel K inmate, Atiya, who brought him down. Unbeknown to Thomas, Chinese drug dealer Atiya was now working with the police to set people up in return for cash. Out of the blue, he called Thomas in Cipinang Jail, and asked him if he could arrange to get a kilogram of
shabu
. Thomas was reluctant at first, but was soon lured by the smell of cash. He organised a Nepalese boy to bring six hundred and fifty grams of
shabu
into Indonesia through Singapore. But then Thomas made a mistake. He broke his rule of refusing direct contact. Atiya didn’t want to use standard procedure of wiring the cash first, and then picking up the drugs from an anonymous hotel room. He wanted to exchange cash for drugs at the same time. As Thomas had known Atiya for years and done deals with him before, he took the bait. He sent his new Indonesian wife to deliver the stash and collect the 40 million rupiah fee ($5300). But a split second after she’d handed over the
shabu
, she was wearing handcuffs.

Thomas had no money to deal. His wife was sentenced to ten years in jail and he got another twelve years on top of the eighteen months he was already serving. During their trials, Thomas and his wife shared a police cell and conceived a child. But in Jakarta, men and women are kept in separate jails, so it will now be years before Thomas sees his wife again. But the Austrian has a new baby son, living with his wife in jail.

Vincente and Clara – the Mexicans

Clara was released from Hotel K after serving five of her seven years. Vincente is currently serving his life sentence in a jail in Java. Their rich Bali-based Chinese drug customer has fled Indonesia. Apparently, things started getting too hot.

Iwan Thalib

Iwan Thalib was moved to Nusakambangan’s Super Maximum Security (SMS) Jail to serve the last couple of years of his sentence. He was transferred out of Hotel K by a particularly strict new boss who was trying to eradicate the drug market by getting rid of the bigger dealers. (It didn’t work. Drugs are still rife in Hotel K.)

In June 2009, Iwan was released from SMS Nusakambangan prison, after serving only eight years of his sixteen-year sentence. He returned to his family in Bali. Within three or four days, he was back inside Hotel K – as a visitor this time. Iwan and his Dutch wife sat in an office eating lunch with three members of the Bali Nine. The three Australians, formerly on death row, had used Iwan’s lawyer to get their death sentences commuted to life and had become friendly with the drug dealer’s family. While Iwan was in jail in Java, his wife had regularly visited the Bali Nine in Hotel K, even hosting some of their families in her home near the jail when they flew to Bali from Australia.

Sonia Gonzales Miranda (Black Monster)

Sonia did three stretches in jail in the time it took to write this book. Initially she was in Bangli Prison, about an hour from Hotel K. She saw me visiting someone else, and charged over to say hello in her funky outfit, comprising a blue denim cap, a mini-skirt and tight black top, with a full face of makeup. She relished telling me that she was now famous in Australia after Schapelle’s book had mentioned her. She said Australian visitors to Hotel K all knew who she was.

I saw her several times during my visits to Bangli. Even after she was released, I met her there. That day, she was trying to get her daughter back from the family she’d sold her to earlier. But only because she wanted to sell her again. She sat next to me on the visitor’s bench in front of the bars, through which we talked to prisoners. She’d set it up, with the help of a prisoner, for the foster mother of her child to come to jail on this morning for a visit. She had a policeman friend waiting outside the door. The air was always charged with Sonia around. She was hiding behind me so the woman wouldn’t see her and run off. Sonia’s plan was to snatch the child back. As we sat there, Sonia showed me baby photos and talked non-stop about her new sexy boyfriend, showing me photos of a very good-looking European guy. But Sonia’s plan failed. The woman didn’t come that day. Sonia left disappointed, but still firing with plenty of strategies to get her daughter back.

Before long, Sonia was inevitably back behind bars in Hotel K for thieving. The place had a non-stop revolving door for Sonia. She served a few months, was released, and about six months later was inside yet again, telling people she always liked to be in jail on Independence Day. This was about her nineteenth incarceration.

For many Indonesians jail is not really a jail, it’s like a shelter. Sonia, for example, keeps coming back. There are hundreds of repeat offenders. They can’t do anything outside but steal.

– Mick

Ruggiero

The thing people don’t realise in jail is that every emotion runs much higher; really high, really low, you know. If you’re depressed, you get really depressed. If you’re happy, you get euphoric for no reason whatsoever – small things – like if I receive an SMS from somebody I haven’t heard from for a while, it seems like I won the lottery.

– Ruggiero

After his transfer from Hotel K to Cipinang, Ruggiero spent two weeks locked up in an isolation cell with Juri. The Italian, who’d been shooting up daily in Hotel K, went through painful withdrawals that Ruggiero witnessed up close. He spent hours massaging Juri and trying to help him through it.

We shared the pain.

– Ruggiero

Ruggiero has now converted devoutly to Buddhism. He regularly spends time praying and meditating in the jail’s temples, trying to evolve into a better person, to give some purpose to the otherwise wasted six and a half years he’s already spent in jail. He still drinks and smokes, and loses the plot sometimes, trying to forget where he is. With remissions, he has about two years left to serve, although he is trying to be the first foreigner to be given parole. Only Indonesians are released on parole, as the authorities fear the foreigners will simply leave the country.

It fuels his frustration to see sadistic killers walking free after only two or three years.

Juri

Juri’s sentence has been reduced from life to fifteen years. He’s already served six years, and with remissions he could be going home to Italy within five years. His devoted parents alternate the responsibility of living in Indonesia to care for him, which means they now see little of each other. It’s undoubtedly hard on them, especially for his mum who doesn’t speak any Indonesian or English. But they refuse to leave their only son alone. Juri’s Timorese wife, Ade, also lives with Juri’s mother or father and sees him three times a week, when visits are permitted.

Nita

Nita is still serving the ten-year sentence that she got when she was caught dealing drugs at the immigration housing. She is in a jail in Java. The Filipino wore the prison-issued blue T-shirt and untailored denim pants whenever I visited her, as she has never been able to recover any of her belongings from Hotel K.

Mick

Mick orchestrated a move out of Hotel K because he was losing his grip on sanity. He contrived a story, telling the jail boss he was being threatened by Laskar. For his protection, Mick was put in cell
tikus.
But the guards couldn’t do much to protect him long term, so they moved him and his girlfriend Trisna to another prison in Bali. Both still defiantly claim their innocence. To try to manage his fury at his incarceration, Mick does yoga daily and meditates for hours at a time. Like so many westerners serving long sentences, he has tried to find some bigger meaning and point to his incarceration and lost years, and believes it has given him spiritual growth.

My mind changed slowly. Why this was happening to me. My attitude, behaviour, changed 180 degrees. I was a madman chasing the governor. I changed from madman to more enlightened. Now, I think I’m blessed. I couldn’t get what I needed outside. It’s like a mystery school in here.

– Mick

Mick has served eight years of his fifteen-year sentence, and is still working on his final appeal.

Robert

Robert was released and went back to the UK. He has nothing to do with his child, conceived through the bars in Hotel K.

Arman

Arman is serving out his many sentences in Nusakambangan’s Super Maximum Security Jail. His sentence has increased from ten years to nearly thirty since first checking in, and he still has several court cases pending from charges that arose during his time in Hotel Kerobokan.

Schapelle

Schapelle has fourteen years left to serve of her twenty-year sentence, taking into account remissions already given. But given her dire mental state, her devoted family is sure she will not survive that long in Hotel K. From day one, her family has fought to prove Schapelle’s innocence. Now, on humanitarian grounds they will try to get clemency from the Indonesian President, but are waiting for a reply from the Australian Government confirming it will support this request. But Schapelle will not admit guilt. She has told her family that she would rather die in jail than admit to being a drug trafficker.

I believe Schapelle has mentally broken down, not just because of the hellish daily life, and the long dark tunnel she is staring down – but because she is innocent; locked up for a crime she didn’t commit. Imagine for a second being in these shoes; there is something in your bag when you arrive on your holiday that you know you did not put there. You fight to get evidence; check-in baggage weight or baggage X-rays. But you get nothing from Qantas. You fight to have the plastic bags fingerprinted but the Indonesian court, typically, refused point blank. If she really didn’t put it in her bag, which is what I believe, she had absolutely no way of proving it. Imagine being innocent and looking ahead at twenty years in Hotel K. It would send anyone mad. It is unsurprising that Schapelle has lost her grip on sanity.