Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  – Agence France-Presse, 4 November 2000

  On Boxing Day 1999 Michael flew into Bali with two diving tanks in one of his bags. They were set to devastate his young life. As he walked across to pick up his dive bag, it was already being closely watched after a routine X-ray scan showed something suspicious in the tanks. Customs officers had sent the bag onto the baggage carousel with all the other holiday luggage to see who would pick it up. The moment Michael wrapped his fingers around its strap, his life as a free man was over.

  Michael and the police tell conflicting stories about what happened next. Police say they took the French man and his diving tanks into an airport office and tested the tanks for oxygen while he stood watching. After the test proved the steel tubes were devoid of oxygen, they drilled into them and found almost four kilograms of hashish divided into hundreds of small packages. According to police, Michael confessed in his first interview with them, that he’d flown to Bali via Bangkok, where he’d bought the drugs in transit, and that he was planning to sell them in Bali.

  Michael denied confessing or having any knowledge of the hashish. He said the tanks belonged to a friend, Phillip, who lived in Bombay and that he’d used them on several dives during a 15-day trip to India. Unfortunately, he could no longer contact his friend. He also claimed the police broke protocol by opening the tanks when he was not in the room.

  Michael was living in Hotel K under the shadow of death by firing squad. His parents flew over from France desperate to help their son, sure of his innocence and outraged by the lack of a chance to prove it. Their pleas to fingerprint the bags containing the hashish were rejected. Michael had confessed and no further investigation was needed.

  His only possibility of an effective defence had nothing to do guilt or innocence. Michael’s mother, Helene, was told a payment of between $330,000 and $420,000 could buy a fifteen-year sentence. But she refused to consider a bribe, believing her son was innocent, and threw away the only strategy that had a chance of working. The judge sentenced Michael to life in prison, rejecting the prosecutors’ request for the death sentence. But he would die in jail. Michael sat in court, slumped in a plastic chair, looking shattered. With only darkness stretching interminably ahead, Michael found a perilous way to deal with the crushing pain of losing his life in Hotel K. He became a heroin addict. Hotel K, after all, was the ideal place to score.

  Michael was the first to face the prospect of the death penalty, and it wasn’t long before the prosecutors requested the same fate for more drug traffickers in Bali. A 29-year-old Mexican scuba diving instructor named Vincente Garcia flew into Bali several months after Michael’s conviction. He passed through immigration, then walked to the luggage carousel to pick up his boogie board bag and another black bag. He showed no sign of fear, despite the fact that his bag was carrying fifteen kilograms of cocaine. Vincente was travelling with a Mexican former model, Clara Gautrin, 32, who was acting as his girlfriend to help create the impression they were holidaying lovers. They made a sexy couple as they confidently walked through the airport, seemingly without a care in the world. They appeared like all the other couples starting a romantic holiday in paradise. Neither knew they had been set up and were walking straight into a trap.

  Vincente had tangled with his former Mexican drug boss by cutting him out of the loop. On previous drug runs, Vincente had been a well-paid mule, but he was ambitious and wanted a bigger cut – after all, he was the one taking all the risks and few drug traffickers were brazen enough to carry fifteen kilograms in one trip. It didn’t take long for one of Bali’s biggest drug bosses, a Chinese man, to snap up Vincente’s services. But it also took little time for his former drug boss in Mexico to find out and exact revenge. He had one of his men follow Vincente to find out his flight details to Bali. Like most smart drug traffickers, Vincente always ensured no one knew his itinerary, only ever giving clients a ballpark arrival date. But his ex-boss’s man was able to find out the details, and passed them onto the Mexican drug lord, who then faxed them through to the Bali police. The moment Vincente checked in his bags, the authorities in Bali were closing in, waiting to pounce as soon as his plane landed at Ngurah Rai Airport.

  The suspects, Vincente Manuel Navarro Garcia and Clara Elena Umana Gautrin, were arrested at the airport on Tuesday on the tourist island of Bali following a flight from the Thai capital, Bangkok. Police said they found the drugs hidden in the couple’s suitcases. Indonesian police said the drugs found on the Mexicans had a street value of $470,000 in Bali.

  – EFE News Service, 12 April 2001

  Vincente and Clara did a deal with the prosecutors and judges that he would be sentenced to fifteen years instead of death and that she would walk free. But the judges reneged on the deal and sentenced Clara to seven years and Vincente to life. Sparing Vincente the firing squad was the best the judges could do without causing suspicion. It would have been awkward to explain why, in the same Bali courtroom, Vincente got fifteen years for fifteen kilograms of cocaine, when Michael got life for less than four kilograms of hashish. Yet, it was clear to anyone watching closely that a deal had been done. Vincente received the same sentence as Michael, despite being charged with trafficking more than four times the amount of drugs.

  Another trafficker checking into Hotel K under the shadow of death was 24-year-old Italian jeweller Juri Angione. He was caught at Ngurah Rai Airport with five kilograms of cocaine in his surfboard bag. Juri had been living in Bali on and off for two years when he told his girlfriend he was going to Thailand for a few days’ break. Instead, he flew to Brazil and picked up a surfboard bag pre-packed with five kilograms of cocaine. He zigzagged his way back to Bali, trying to avoid scrutinised routes. He stayed away from Jakarta Airport, as a Brazilian courier, Marco, had been busted there several months earlier with thirteen kilograms of cocaine in a hang-glider frame. Juri was now working for the same wealthy Italian drug boss who had employed Marco. The boss was a man who lived in Bali, indulging in the good life – watching sunsets and sipping cocktails at the most exclusive beach bars and restaurants while his couriers flew the skies. The drug boss had told Juri he needed him for an emergency run to get bribe money to save Marco from a firing squad. Juri flew from Brazil to Amsterdam to Bangkok, where he changed airlines from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to Thai Airways. It was here he got a stark warning.

  A Thai customs officer saw something suspicious in his surfboard bag as it went through the X-ray machine. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, touching the top of the bag. ‘It’s plastic,’ Juri said. The officer moved his hands towards the zip. Juri had to act fast to convince him not to open it. ‘It’s just plastic, it protects my board.’ He stood watching as the officer’s hand smoothed across the top of the bag. His hand stopped at the zip . . . hovering. ‘It’s just plastic,’ Juri urged, trying to sound blasé despite his heart slamming into his chest. ‘Okay,’ the officer said, waving him on and casually shifting his attention to the next passenger’s bag. Juri grabbed the bag and walked away before letting out a huge breath. It had been an unbelievably close call. But his sense of relief was fleeting. He knew that the bag was not well-packed when he left Brazil, but he’d taken it anyway. Now that a routine X-ray scan had picked up something suspicious, his fears were confirmed. And he still had to get through Bali customs.

  Throughout the Thai Airways flight to Bali, he debated whether or not he should just leave the bag at the airport. He’d lose the cocaine but keep his life. He’d smuggled drugs at least twenty times, but this was different. He was exposed by the badly packed bag. By the time the plane hit the Bali tarmac, he’d resolved to go through with it. ‘At the end I say, okay, I will try, I will keep playing. I wanted to play.’ Even the ‘Death to drug traffickers’ signs around him as he queued to buy a tourist visa failed to change his mind.

  As he walked down the long corridors from the plane’s exit to immigration at Ngurah Rai Airport, customs officials were already circling. After another routine X-ray in Bali had rai
sed suspicions, a sniffer dog confirmed the bag was piled with drugs. Customs then sent it as bait out onto the carousel to see who would pick it up. Like Michael and Vincente before him, Juri was a walking target as he entered the baggage hall and walked across to collect his bags. The surfboard bag was sitting inconspicuously on the floor among dozens of other bags. He scooped it up and walked towards the green line; nothing to declare. But this time he wasn’t so lucky.

  A thorough search of the bag produced three surfboards, two swim suits, two pairs of surfing shoes, a snorkel and 29 plastic packages hidden in the inner lining of the bag. Wrapped in black carbon paper, the packages contained suspicious white powder, which a simple test confirmed as high-quality cocaine. [Juri] Angione admitted that the bag, clothes, shoes and surfboards were his, but denied any knowledge of the cocaine.

  Airport authorities on the resort island of Bali arrested a 24-year-old Italian national on Wednesday afternoon for attempting to smuggle some 5.26 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of about Rp 4.5 billion [$600,000] into Indonesia.

  – Jakarta Post, 4 December 2003

  The prosecutors asked for the death penalty for Juri, as they’d done with Vincente and Michael. But the Bali court sentenced him to life in jail. Juri’s fellow drug trafficker, the Brazilian, Marco, lost his appeal against the death sentence and was sent to a maximum-security prison on Nusakambangan Island to await his execution.

  Why didn’t you listen to the warning in Bangkok?

  Juri: On plane from Bangkok to Bali I was thinking do I get the bag or I leave the bag in airport? I was thinking that. I was expecting I might get caught. But I was thinking no, I don’t want to lose that stuff, what a waste all this stuff. At the end I say okay, I will try, I will keep playing. I wanted to play. So I go to get the bag and when I went outside they stopped me. They touch, they ask me what is this. I say plastic. They say open it.

  Did you try to stop them opening it?

  Juri: I say the same thing as in Bangkok. I say it’s plastic, it’s plastic. But they don’t listen to me, they open, they cut open the bag, take out a little bit of stuff.

  How were you feeling?

  Juri: Fucked up. Yeah. Fucked up. Way bad.

  Did you offer police at the airport any money?

  Juri: No. I was thinking about that but there were too many policemen.

  How many policemen?

  Juri: A lot.

  Fellow inmate: Want to see his eyes shine! Was the cocaine good, Juri?

  Juri: Yeah. It was the same stuff as Marco had.

  Fellow inmate: From Peru. The best stuff in the world, about 85 per cent pure. The most you can get is 95 per cent. If you make a big line, it can explode your heart, it’s extremely pure. Juri had very good quality stuff because I know the source.

  Was it going to be sold in Bali?

  Juri: No, in New Zealand and Australia.

  Were you going to take it there?

  Juri: No, not me. Somebody else take it by boat.

  Fellow inmate: By catamaran.

  That was your job finished?

  Juri: Yeah.

  What did the police do with the cocaine?

  Juri: The police in Bali sell it for sure. They cut it and mix it. They make fifteen kilograms with my stuff.

  How many times had you smuggled cocaine into Bali?

  Juri: In Bali, it was the first time I bring cocaine. I do other drugs – hashish, ecstasy, like that. But first time ever cocaine and it was first time I bring something for somebody else. I always bring my own stuff. I always pack my own bags. I’m a user. But I do it this time because there was an emergency for Marco. They had to find someone to bring more stuff to make more money to help Marco. I didn’t know Marco that time. But to help my boss, I say, ‘Yeah, okay, I go’.

  Had you trafficked drugs to other countries?

  Juri: Yeah. In Italy, in Holland, in India.

  Cocaine?

  Juri: Cocaine, everything.

  Heroin?

  Juri: No never. Ecstasy, hashish. Heroin never. I don’t play that.

  And always in a surfboard?

  Juri: No, in a bag sometimes, in my stomach. I swallow balls. I swallow one kilogram of hash balls.

  How do you swallow?

  Juri: You make balls with the plastic. I roll the hash in cellophane paper for the food and make small, small balls.

  And you’re stomach was okay … because you’re so skinny?

  Juri: Yeah, my stomach’s okay because I take a long time to swallow, like one whole day. I needed ten hours to swallow that stuff.

  And do you eat any food that day?

  Juri: No, no, cannot.

  And then you get on the plane?

  Juri: Yeah.

  How did you get involved with drugs?

  Juri: It’s life, yeah. What happened like you meet someone, and then you meet someone else. Slowly, slowly. But since I’m a kid in Italy I already play, like sell hashish in Italy.

  You sold it when you were in Italy?

  Juri: Yeah, since I was 14 years old, I sell it. In the school I sell hashish many times. I sell it through the guy who sells pizza for breakfast at school. If somebody wants a special pizza, he sells it with my hashish on top.

  Did you move to Bali because it was a good base for selling drugs?

  Juri: I move to Bali because I have a friend there – he has a house. So I moved in with him and we started going to India and travelling around a little bit.

  To get drugs?

  Juri: Yeah. But India is a beautiful place as well. I like travelling a lot.

  How many times would you have gone through an international airport with drugs … ten times?

  Juri: More. Twenty, thirty times.

  And you’ve never got caught before?

  Juri: Never.

  Why did you get caught this time, do you think?

  Juri: It was my time.

  – Juri and fellow inmate

  CHAPTER 6

  NO STAR TO FIVE STAR

  You cannot describe what feeling you have when you walk into Kerobokan. It’s not like a normal place. Walking down into a dirty room, it’s not your language, not your people, another planet. All the time you think you’re dreaming; it’s not really happening; you’re not really there. You don’t know what to do or think. It’s extreme. You go up and down. It’s like you’ve been kidnapped.

  – Mick, Australian inmate

  Checking into a third-world jail is a frightening ordeal for most westerners, but at Hotel K after a mug shot, a haircut and paperwork in the offices, inmates are taken on a surprisingly pleasant walk through nicely groomed gardens to their new cell. On that walk, Hotel K resembles a cheap Balinese resort. Prisoners stretch out like cats under shady palm trees, reading or sleeping. Some play tennis or pray in the small Hindu temple. The path turns at a small canteen, where a group of prisoners might stand about chatting. A laughing child runs across the lawns, flying a kite. Under a palm tree, a couple is kissing. This initial snapshot lulls a new inmate into a false sense of calm.

  It doesn’t last long.

  When the door of their new cell slams shut, the pleasant scenes cease. In the initiation or pre-sentencing blocks J and C2, there is no sunlight, only bright fluorescent lights. A thick blue haze colours the air, from the clove cigarettes dangling from people’s lips. They’re hot concrete boxes, each crammed so tightly, with up to twenty-five men, that the prisoners are constantly touching elbows or knees. There’s not enough room for everyone to sit down at the same time; they sit and sleep in shifts. No one can stretch out unless they nab a spot near the door where they can scissor their legs through the bars. Everyone else sleeps with their legs and arms weaving in and out of the sticky limbs of others.

  In the corner is a single hole-in-the-ground toilet, which is usually blocked with old, hardened faeces. The stench attracts a cloud of mosquitoes. Rats run in and out of the cells. New western inmates watch in disbelief when a local corners a rat, breaks i
ts neck and then eats it raw.

  The initiation cellblocks are filled with heroin addicts, including some with AIDS and hepatitis, who will later be put in a cellblock specifically for drug addicts, known as ‘the junkie block’. Often they’re covered in sores, obsessively picking at them. The addicts shoot up, wrapping their arms tightly to find a vein before plunging in a blunt needle, taking a hit and passing the dirty syringe on. The tight squeeze ensures all prisoners are exposed to their diseases, skin rashes, sores and infections.

  Three times a day in the initiation cellblocks, inmates are fed like they’re monkeys. Usually they just stretch their arms through the bars to those prisoners who wheel the food carts around the jail, holding out a hand or a piece of plastic to get a spoonful of undercooked hard white rice with a ladle of watery cabbage stew slopped on top. The inmates’ only respite is a walk across to the visiting room, although many have no one to visit them, so are deprived even of that.

  When I first came from the police station, they put me in C2. When anyone comes from the police station, they put you there first, in one small room with twenty-five people. Not enough room for twenty-five people. Some people sit down to sleep. I was there for two months. That time there was no toilet. You have to shit in plastic. Piss in plastic. I went two weeks and five days with no shit.