Background of Bali Nine

This is a case that a group of nine arrested at overseas for a capital punishment which

means the punishment of death (Black 1968, pp. 263). 17th April 2005, nine

Australians were arrested by Indonesian authorities, the Indonesia National Police in

Bali with the tip-off given four days before by the Australian Federal Police. This is

because they were attempted to smuggle 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Bali, Indonesia

to Sydney, Australia. The persons who involving are Andrew Chan and Myuran

Sukumaran, they were the ringleaders of this trafficking of heroin, and the others

namely Si Yi Chen, Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen and Matthew Norman are known as the

Melasti Three due to Melasti is the place they had been asserted. The rest were Martin

Stephens, Renae Lawrence, Scott Rush and Michael Czugai, these four were arrested

by the Indonesia customs officers before getting into the airplane to Sydney. On that

time, Wockner and King (2010, pg7-15) describe that they were discovered having

many of heroin strapped to their bodies at the Ngurah Rai International Airport. These

nine people were named as the Bali Nine. Chan who was the organiser of this illegal

operation arrested separately at the airport and was not found carried any drugs on his

body (BBC news 2015). The Melasti Three and Sukumaran were arrested in a hotel

room at the Melasti Beach Bungalows, they found with almost 350 grams of heroin in

a suitcase by the Indonesia National Police (Wockner & King 2010) (ABC news

2015).

Each of them was charged under the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No 22 of 1997

arts 78(1)(b) and 82(1).

Article 78(1)(b) punish anybody whomsoever without any rights or illegally: (b)

Possess, keep in stock, or control narcotics Group 1, other than in the form of plants,
shall be punished with an imprisonment of not more than ten years and a fine of not

more than IDR. 500,000,000.00 or five hundred million rupiahs.

Meanwhile, article 82(1) punish anyone whomsoever without any rights or illegally:

a. Imports, exports, offers for sale, distributes, sells, buys, delivers, acts as broker or

exchanges narcotics Category I, shall be punished with a death penalty, or life

sentence, or imprisonment of not more than twenty (20) years, and a fine of not more

than IDR 1,000,000,000 or one billion rupiah.

The drug in this case which was the Heroin listed in the list of the narcotics Category

1 according to the law (Republic of Indonesia, 2003). In February 2006, the Denpasar

District Court was handing down the sentence on all of them. That two ringleaders

were sentenced to death by firing squad. Then the left was all sentenced to life

imprisonment. All of them appealed the District Court sentences. 26 April 2006, the

Bali High Court confirmed the death sentences which imposed on the pair. The next

day, the Court reduced the sentences of the Melasti Three, Czugaj and Lawrence from

life to twenty years' imprisonment. Besides that, Rush and Stephens life sentences

were upheld and confirmed. However, the prosecution appealed against the reduction

in the sentences of the Bali Nine. 6 September 2006, the Indonesian Supreme Court

already upheld the convictions of Rush and the Melasti Three. Meanwhile, the

Supreme Court upheld the life sentence which imposed on which imposed on

Stephens and reinstated it on Czugaj too (Forbes 2006). Lastly, the two ringleaders

remained the death sentence on them by the Supreme Court (ABC news 2006) (The

Guardian 2015). 6 March 2008, the Supreme Court reduced the Malasti Three's death

sentences to life imprisonment (Forbes 2008).

Hence, the two ringleaders of the Bali Nine, Chan and Sukumaran have been

sentenced to death by firing squad, they both were executed on 29 April 2015 at Nusa

Kambangan prison (Cheer et al. 2015) (Maguire & Houghton 2016). Lawrence has

been sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. Then, the other six of the Bali Nine

have been sentenced to life imprisonment.