No More Tomorrows (25 page)

Then there was the familiar scene of Sonia going crazy. She was kicking, screaming and thrashing wildly as girls struggled to hold her back from attacking another girl, who’d refused to give her a cigarette. I didn’t want to get involved. I went to church. But I walked straight back into new hysteria later on.

The concrete outside my cell was covered in blood. I’d just missed a nasty fight. Like a pack of angry dogs, eight male prisoners had charged into the women’s block, attacking a male prisoner there. They brutally beat him for five minutes before the guards pulled them off. He was a bloody unconscious mess and had to be taken to hospital. The other prisoners walked away without any trouble, the guards simply dismissing it as ‘a personal matter’. We all knew the guards often got prisoners to do their dirty work.

I woke up the next day at 5 a.m. to Sonia screaming and crying hysterically. She was still screaming at 7.30 a.m. when our cells were unlocked, so I stopped to check on her on my way to collect water. There was a huge rock at her feet. She said she’d woken up with her cellmate, Kartini, who has AIDS, attacking her with the rock and threatening to kill her. The skin had been taken off her stomach and the side of her knee, where she’d been hit. Another girl from her cell had been hit, too, and looked shocked. The guards didn’t seem to care!

But the one drama affecting me the most was the broken water pump. Water just trickled from the tap, and it was taking me half an hour to fill a bucket. Salma and I were both pleading with the guards to fix it, but nothing was being done. It didn’t seem to worry them that soon we’d have no water to flush the toilet, wash our clothes, our hair or ourselves.

Sleep came in a trickle, too. Several times a night I woke up with stomach cramps, urgently running to the toilet with diarrhoea. Most nights I was also kept awake by girls fighting, screaming between cells, banging the cell bars and going hysterical. I usually ended up crying myself to sleep.

Sonia, shut up! Just past 10.30 p.m. and Sonia has started to yell at girls in her cell and girls in another cell. Hey, but what’s new!

Diary entry, 22 March 2005

There were a few upbeat moments to lift my spirits, like receiving a gift from a girl in my cell. Her husband bought me three necklaces as a celebration present: one for each of the men who were going to be named by the jailed informant. Many foreign prisoners were also coming up to me in visits, wishing me luck for my case after hearing the news of the new evidence.

I was getting a huge amount of support from people in letters, with more than a hundred a day flooding in from Australia, Indonesia and, unbelievably, as far away as France, Belgium, England, America and Canada. I was also spoilt with gifts of everything from biscuits, face creams, perfumes, clothes and CD players to bunches of beautiful flowers. I was even sent a most precious gift of a certificate making me the adoptive mother of an endangered orang-utan called Mindow, who lives in an Indonesian forest. I sat in my cell each afternoon reading all the letters, regardless of how ill or blue I felt. They usually made me smile, though I got the odd sick one, like the one that read: ‘You are a liar, a common whore, slut, tart and an actress who loves the camera.’ I tried not to let it upset me but, in my fragile state, it did. I lived in the hope that one day a letter might be my key to getting out of here, revealing the secrets of who did this.

I also got daily visits from strangers, often up to twenty people a day. The guards freely let everyone through the front door, as ‘Schapelle tourism’ was becoming a very lucrative business for them. They hit people for the equivalent of $20 to visit instead of the usual ninety cents. For small groups, they were charging around $100 – all the cash just filling up their pockets. The prisoners working as hosts to hand out drinks and straw mats also boosted their prices from $1 to anything up to $20. I couldn’t believe how much people were paying.

I was very grateful for so much public support, and I tried to see everyone. But at the same time it was draining, speaking to so many strangers every day, answering the same questions over and over again. I was tired and running out of energy. Most people I felt were genuine, but some came just to gawp at me, and they always made me feel like an animal at the zoo. Some would even whisper about me as though I couldn’t hear or wasn’t there. But generally the huge swell of public support was uplifting and the single positive thing that came from the media mania.

I had a visit from some more guys from the Darwin Football Club. They’re coming to see me on Friday, too – might ask them to take their shirts off!!

Diary entry, 22 March 2005

That was my twisted week before I returned to the glare of lights, cameras and action in the chaotic courtroom.

Court tomorrow. I’m scared, I’m tired. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m here, I’m alive, but I’m just surviving. I’m locked into this compound, our own little society, I can’t get out, I’m just here – and it draws all your strength, feels like the strength has to go somewhere. And it feels like it’s drawn out and just keeps building up the strength of those bloody cement walls and green cage bars. I can’t get out.

Diary entry, 23 March 2005

Could not sleep last night as the court hearings come closer to the end. I’m so frightened of the final outcome. All the girls in my cell woke at 12 midnight and all prayed for me, which made me cry even more – was really nice of them.

Diary entry, 24 March 2005

The morning before court, I made the unusual effort to wash my hair. Collecting the dirty cold water from the dribbling tap, then ladling it over my head in a stinky bathroom as girls with diarrhoea screamed to use it was not my idea of a good time. But I’d been to court week after week with the same greasy, untouched bun, and Merc was starting to get mad at me.

So with clean hair and layers of obsessively applied make-up, I went out to meet Ron and criminologist Professor Paul Wilson, who was giving character evidence on me in court. We talked for about fifteen minutes before I was led off to be handcuffed. I was relieved to find I was going to court with just one other prisoner, as thirty-three of us had been squeezed into the sardine bus the week before. He was a university student who’d burnt a flag of the Indonesian president’s face, so the police were anticipating a lot of media for us both.

The crazy mobbing at court each week now made me fear for my life. I was terrified. Anyone could come in close, a member of a drug gang or a crazy person, and stab me or shoot me. It would be easy to slip a knife in my side, unseen in the anarchy. They’d just mingle back into the crowd safely undetected, bringing this drugs case to an end.

The media scrum was becoming more desperate, more grasping, more clawing – swooping and banging me around from the second I put a foot on the ground. Every single time I was pulled through the mob, I feared I would be killed. I was a sitting duck, an easy target. That day was the worst yet. They were all screaming, yelling, pushing and fighting to get their shots. I squealed in agony as someone stomped on my foot, and winced in pain as the handcuffs sliced my wrists.

It was mayhem inside the court, too. It was packed full of reporters, cameramen and cameras, all eyes and lenses pointed at me. I was up last, but the judge told me to sit in the hot seat for the first few minutes, giving the photographers a chance to get their shots. They leapt around like crazed cats. It was unbelievable. It was humiliating and embarrassing. I was fighting for my life, yet I was made to sit there like a trained monkey at show time. I hated it. I tried to block it out, just kept looking ahead, praying and imagining God’s heart. Finally, I was told to sit with my lawyers. I walked across the court biting my lip, trying desperately not to cry.

Baggage handler Scott Speed was first up, telling the judges that airport security in Brisbane was so slack it didn’t even have a baggage X-ray machine for checked-in bags. It shocked me, as I knew my lawyers had battled for weeks to get an answer on whether Brisbane airport had an X-ray of my bag. Why hadn’t they just said ‘No’ instantly?

He also testified that airport staff had been sacked for failing drugs tests and for rummaging through passengers’ luggage, and that it was possible for someone to insert drugs into a bag after check-in. He said that in 95 per cent of cases a baggage handler would notice a boogie-board bag weighing more than the regulation three kilograms and would ask the passenger to open it.

Just after the next witness sat down in the hot seat, I was taken by surprise when the judge asked me to stand up. I was overcome with a sense of stage fright, as all eyes turned to me, scrutinising me.

The judge then asked Professor Wilson, ‘Is this the face of a criminal?’ I felt so uncomfortable, so awkward, like my arms and hands were too big for my body. They dangled awkwardly by my sides. Standing in front of all those people, all staring, while someone analysed my character, was awful. I thought,
How could this person I just met for fifteen minutes this morning possibly know what kind of person I am?
But this was all we had to resort to; we didn’t have anything else.

‘Your honour, I cannot look at her face alone. I can listen to her answer my questions, which I have done. I can look at her face and I can speak to people who know her well. Using all of that information, I can honestly say that she did not know there were drugs in her bag.’

He told the court that I didn’t fit the profile of a drug mule and I should be allowed to go home. The whole court was clapping, and Lily and I were both crying. He also said I was neither a genius nor dumb, but of average intelligence. Mum, Merc and I all had a bit of a laugh about that.

During the lunch break, I was told that John Ford, the Melbourne prisoner, would be allowed to enter Indonesia to give evidence in my case. My heart skipped a beat.

After the break, I was on the stand. I answered all the questions as best as I could remember. That’s all I can do. I’m facing a possible firing squad. I’m scared shitless, out of my head, constant tears flowing. The best I can do is to tell the truth; that’s all. And try to stay in control of myself. I thought I was going to lose it when the judge asked me to stand and touch my boogie board. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t touch it, literally thought I was either going to faint or vomit. I told the judge, ‘No! I won’t touch it.’ He asked why. So I told him, ‘Because this thing is destroying my life. If I didn’t boogie-board, I would not be here today! Simple as that!’

Diary entry, 24 March 2005

But proving I didn’t do it wasn’t simple. When the judge asked me if I had any proof that I didn’t put the plastic bag inside my boogie-board bag, what could I say? What proof did I have? I wanted to say that, no, I don’t have any proof simply because
no one had done their job properly
. They touched the bags and contaminated evidence. They did not fingerprint the bags, did not weigh all the bags, did not DNA-test the marijuana, did not access security camera vision at the airport and did not investigate where I might sell the drugs.

In Australia, the airports did not give us any security-camera vision either, despite there being hundreds of cameras at both airports. Though Qantas did admit to destroying some footage, they did not give us baggage X-rays or figures for individual baggage weight. So I’d been screwed at both ends, and now all I had was my word. There was so much I wanted to say but couldn’t.

Instead, I said: ‘I have never been involved with drugs. I don’t like drugs. They are not my drugs. I wouldn’t even know where to get drugs from. I surrendered my luggage to go on a holiday. I surrendered it at the airport. I had nothing to do with it after that.’

‘So if you did not put the plastic bag inside your boogie-board bag and you are not the owner of the bag,’ the judge replied, ‘what is your alibi? Why and how is that plastic bag in your bag now?’

‘That’s what we are here to try to find out. I have many theories in my head. It has been six months now. I am still here. We need to find who put it there. There is nothing I can say to prove to you that I didn’t do it.
But I did not do it. It is not mine.
I wouldn’t threaten my life – I love my family, I love everybody. I would not jeopardise my life like this.’

My family was suffering so deeply, and me expressing my love for them in a public courtroom was heartbreaking. I was biting my lip, trying to hold back my tears, but I couldn’t. I loved them all so much. I was trying my best, pouring out my heart, laying myself bare. I so desperately wanted the judges to believe me. I needed these judges to see I was innocent and make it right. I was fighting so hard – for my life.

It was so painful, so hot and so hard to focus with all the microphones and cameras pointed at me. I tried hard to ignore them, but it was physically impossible. The microphones were so close I’d hit them with my hands whenever I spoke, and cameras went off like machine-gun fire whenever I moved a fraction. If I wiped away a tear or moved my leg, the cameras would fire. It was disruptive and embarrassing. So I was trying not to move, trying to sit as still as a statue so I didn’t set off another round of rapid-fire
click-click-click-click
. Didn’t they get it? My life was on the line – couldn’t they show a little respect?

It was chaos. There were at least thirty people around the walls and fifteen more sprawled across the floor between me and the judges. They were squatting under the judges’ bench, lying on the floor, hanging through the windows and even standing behind the judges and filming between their heads. One guy held a long boom microphone right across the middle of the courtroom, losing control of it at one point and hitting the ceiling fan. The judge didn’t seem to mind any of it. His only rule was that cameras and mikes were held below my face so he could see it – or so all photographers could get a clear shot!