Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  Jail life is more dangerous than before because inside the jail is a very powerful gang. This gang is more powerful than the security inside the jail. If the gang commands you, you must do it freely without any complaints or they will hit you. Being block leader I have to do my job seriously, but dealing with the gang is very hard for me. I talk sometimes to the woman security, who is very close to me, but she can do nothing more than us.

  – Nita

  The women were not even safe in their own cellblock. The gang could go wherever it wanted.

  One afternoon, a young, drunken Laskar recruit walked into the women’s block and approached Australian inmate Schapelle Corby. She had returned from performing in one of Hotel K’s regular PR stunts – swinging open its doors to journalists and TV cameras to show the women doing a tightly choreographed exercise routine on the grass, in stark contrast to the hellish anarchy that really existed. Schapelle was sitting outside her cell when the inmate sat down opposite her. ‘Come and sit with me,’ he said. ‘No thanks.’ He angrily slapped his leg. ‘Sit here.’ ‘Sorry, no thanks, I’m busy.’ She turned away and walked into her cell. ‘Schapelle, Schapelle, Schapelle.’ He kept calling until she appeared back in the doorway, then hurled a brick at her. It missed her, but hit the bars and broke in half. He threw several more, but she’d retreated into the cell. He was angry. ‘If that’s not big enough, how about this?’ he yelled, throwing a large rock and causing the nearby inmates to scurry into their cells.

  He then turned and screamed abuse at a female guard, who burst into tears, frightened and powerless to do anything. A couple of Laskars finally took him out of Block W. But within half an hour, he was back. The guards could do little but lock all the women in their cells early for their own protection.

  In the men’s block too, the gang instilled fear. Around 6 am one day, Pemuka Saidin was doing his patrol when he received a phone call telling him to come quickly to the gang’s cellblock, C1. Inmate Beny was dead – hanging by a thick plastic rope over the squat toilet. The cells inside the block were already unlocked and inmates had gathered to look. Saidin told everyone to stand back. No-one was to touch Beny until the police arrived. They soon turned up and untied the plastic rope, and Saidin and an officer lifted the body down. Most of those inmates in the block knew the truth. Beny had been strung up by the gang.

  If you kill yourself, there are visible signs. I think they overdosed him first and hanged him while he was unconscious, but still alive.

  – Inmate

  North Sumatran inmate Alpones Simbolon – nicknamed Beny – had been well-liked among the westerners. He often talked philosophy with Mick, or shot up with Thomas, who he’d known since their stint together in Hotel K ten years earlier. Beny had an Australian ex-wife and teenage son, and an Indonesian wife and a young son. His local wife and their 12-year-old boy had often visited him, with the boy even staying overnight in Beny’s cell occasionally. Beny – dubbed a ‘drug trafficking big shot’ in the local papers – had been caught with more than two kilograms of heroin, and had been next to face the death penalty after Frenchman Michael and Mexican Vincente. He had hoped to do a deal and get fifteen years, but like the other two had received life. He admitted to friends in Hotel K that he’d been dealing up to six kilograms of smack a month.

  Inmates had different theories about why he was dead, but none believed Beny suicided. It was a paid hit. Some thought Beny, a heroin and shabu user, had been murdered for a spiralling drug debt and it was a warning to all. But those closest to him were convinced it was because he knew too much, was using too much smack and had become loose-lipped; something not tolerated by drug bosses. The night of his hanging, several prisoners heard Beny shouting as one of the Laskar gang hit him.

  A cursory jail investigation deemed his death suicide. But the police suspected foul play, telling the media there could be a link between Beny’s death and a syndicate that was possibly behind the Bali Nine. Beny’s body was exhumed and autopsied.

  Police are investigating a possible link between the suspicious death of a convicted drug dealer in a Bali jail and the syndicate believed to be behind the Bali Nine. The body of a man convicted in 2002 of trafficking 2.2kg of heroin has been exhumed after he was found dead in Bali’s Kerobokan Prison last week. Dealer Alpones Simbolon was apparently hanged in the washroom of his cell last Tuesday. His death was originally treated as suicide, but Indonesian police said that there was a possibility it might be linked to the same syndicate as the Bali Nine.

  – The Daily Telegraph, 25 April 2005

  When the autopsy found there had been drugs in Beny’s system, the police investigation was closed, with no further word of a link to the syndicate. But local journalists and those inside Hotel K had no doubt that Laskar Bali had been paid to kill him.

  After Laskar entered the jail, there were one or two unsolved murders inside the prison. Although the prison authorities said it was suicide, a friend of mine who is very close to Laskar, said they were Laskar jobs.

  – Journalist, Jakarta Post

  Beny’s death cast a shadow of sadness over the westerners. Scottish Robert walked around for days in his usual drunken haze muttering, ‘Why did they have to kill him? Why?’ It was a sentiment shared by all.

  Out of five major gangs in Bali, Laskar was the most violent. The up-market tourist areas of Seminyak and Legian were its turf. Laskar was in charge of security in all the nightclubs, bars and restaurants, also selling ecstasy in most of the major tourist clubs, such as Bounty, the Hard Rock Café, Paddy’s and Double Six. Four or five Laskar members were security at each club, and had the ability to call on its five hundred or so members if a situation escalated. It was a shock when the top bosses of Laskar, including number one Agung Aseng, were sent to jail. They normally had immunity, working with police to evade punishment.

  Usually the Bali police tried not to disturb the Laskars. Here is how it works in [the] Balinese underworld; the gang kills someone, the police announce informally to the gang leaders that they have to surrender the person who killed.

  Please make our job easy, the police say. The leadership of the gang will hold meetings to decide who will be sent to the police to confess as the killer. They will never send the actual killer because the actual killer is an asset to the gang. A killer will increase its reputation and power.

  This is the story behind the story that never made the newspaper or [reached] the public. Denpasar Moon, supposedly a karaoke bar but it’s open until six in the morning, is right across the street from a military complex that oversees Bali.

  The security of this Denpasar Moon is not by Laskar. On this night, there is a violent argument with one of the security and one of the guests. It turns out that the guest has a good relationship with Laskar, with Agung Aseng, the head of Laskar himself. He calls Agung Aseng. The Laskars arrive in two open jeeps, carrying swords, spears, lances.

  And they attack Denpasar Moon security. One of the on-duty military men at the regional complex (First Corporal I Gusti Ketut) hears the commotion. He goes to check, he wants to know what is happening, he approaches Denpasar Moon, and is stabbed and killed by Agung Aseng and his men while he was trying to break up the fight.

  I was there several hours after the murder of this military guy, and already several young soldiers were gathering and speaking about revenge. The commander of Bali military summonsed all his officers and told them he will not tolerate any revenge, because the image of Indonesian military is still very low and they should not create an incident that will further tarnish that image.

  But his subordinate, chief of the Denpasar military, was a very young, very tough, no-nonsense guy. He calls the chief of Denpasar police and says, ‘Do you have a suspect yet?’ Of course they didn’t have a suspect yet because they had to sort it out with the gang first. The military knew Laskar did it; they knew Agung Aseng was there.

  So this young military guy informs the Denpasar police chief, ‘Okay the one who commit[s] the cr
ime is Laskar and . . . the guy’s name who was involved in the attack is Agung Aseng. I expect all the suspects to be arrested within twenty-four hours; otherwise I and my men will arrest them. And if I do the arrest, you can be sure that none of them will be alive to stand trial’.

  It was not an empty threat. A group of military soldiers in plain clothes was already surrounding Agung Aseng’s house under direct order from him.

  The police chief knew the house was surrounded and called Agung Aseng, saying, ‘Please surrender’.

  Agung Aseng surrendered. The Denpasar police chief called the Denpasar military chief … ‘We’ve got the suspects’.

  So, normally there is some arrangement with the gangs, but when you deal with an angry army guy, you don’t have any choice. Agung Aseng got three or four years. It’s common knowledge that each night he’s still able to leave the prison, stay at his house, or control his men who are working in the streets of Legian and Seminyak. Eight Laskars got sentenced. And, suddenly, when they went to jail, Laskar Bali owned the jail. I think most of the guards are frightened of the gang, afraid for their own lives and their families’ lives.

  – Journalist Wayan Juniartha of the Jakarta Post

  From the first day Agung Aseng entered Hotel K, he took over, strutting about while talking on a mobile phone, walking into the boss’s office, out the front door, doing whatever he liked. The guards knew the power of the Laskars and just stood back to let the gang take control.

  I remember once I was at the front door and Agung Aseng came to the guards’ door and asked, ‘May I come in? May I come in?’ . . . He was supposed to be in jail. He’d been out for two days and came to spend the night in jail.

  Nobody dares close Agung Aseng’s cell door. Every night he had a party, barbecue, smoke marijuana, supply whisky for the guards. Every night. Outside every block there is a small garden. After 5 pm everyone has to go inside the block and the block is locked. But not his. His was always open. And whoever he wants to come, he tells the guards, ‘Go and pick him up at his block’.

  – Ruggiero

  He brings a woman to his room; he brings his people, his friends from outside and inside. Free. No limits. Mostly, he went out to sleep at home. Every morning he would come back just to close the eyes of the government. In Kerobokan, everybody is working for Agung Aseng.

  – Den

  If the guards tried to impose authority, they were bashed. Trying to lock boss Agung Aseng in his cell one night caused a guard to be viciously beaten. Two other guards stood by watching, helplessly. Assisting him would only have meant them being bashed too. Another guard was beaten up by an angry Laskar inmate for refusing to let him walk out the front door. The inmate was not punished.

  The guards and their families lived under threat; all knew Laskar could mobilise its members with a phone call. Just as they did at nightclubs, a Laskar pack would descend on Hotel K to answer a call. Several times, dozens of Laskars turned up inside Hotel K to bare their teeth. A rumour that Agung and his men would be moved to a prison outside Bali brought more than twenty gangsters.

  They were sitting on the lawn, drinking arak there to protest. The guards could not do anything. Maybe twenty, thirty people came. Sometimes they came to one block, they sit [on] the grass and drink arak and guards cannot speak, because how many people in Laskar – a thousand people. Guards don’t want to die.

  – Thomas

  Laskar was jail mafia, brutally enforcing its own laws, sometimes collaborating with the guards to bash inmates. If a prisoner was caught escaping, failing to pay drug bills or had committed atrocious crimes, the Laskars would take the Hotel K law into their own hands. During an afternoon visit, a Laskar member doing time for killing a man dragged a new inmate through the blue room and into the large office atrium. He forced the inmate to his knees and lifted his hand ready to crack him across the skull, then stopped. He caught a glimpse of Schapelle and her visitor watching him through the door. He left the prisoner trembling on his knees and walked across to explain that the inmate was a paedophile. He was about to get his first prison bashing.

  Laskar also did personal security jobs for prisoners. If someone had a phone, an MP3 player, cash, or anything else, stolen, they could pay Laskar to get it back. The Laskar enforcers were always keen to do a little business on the side. One westerner paid the gang to punish a new inmate who had ripped him off a year earlier. The new inmate had promised to use his court connections to get the westerner’s sentence cut on appeal. The westerner was desperate. He paid him 175 million rupiah ($23,000), but his sentence was increased by two years. The local man had stolen the money. So when the new inmate was caught with hashish and put in Hotel K, he was a walking bullseye. Several times the Laskars hurt him badly, trying to extract the stolen cash for the westerner inmate.

  They locked him in the room and beat the shit out of him.

  – Inmate

  While the Laskars often had a reason for their violent attacks, a lot of the aggressive young recruits, often high on drugs or drunk on arak and power, terrorised inmates just for the hell of it.

  They are brainless. Big guys, big body, small brains, probably small cock. Totally brainless people.

  – Ruggiero

  Ruggiero’s outspoken nature and hot Latin temperament didn’t serve him well with the gang. He clashed often with Laskar, initially refusing to swallow their constant harassment. But it was a losing battle.

  I had already been beaten up so many times by the gang there, because I fight against Laskar a few times. It was very uneven. Kick me in the face, hit me with a stick. Because I wouldn’t take any shit from them. I buy ten beers and they want to confiscate five. They do whatever they want.

  One day I was playing tennis with the Australian Chris, and Laskar Bali came and broke the racquets. They were drunk. If someone brings me food – say, two apples – they take one. If I punch the guy to get the apple back, ten Laskar guys punch me; in the end, I say, ‘Keep the apple’. It [got] to that stage. They are all maniacs. The problem is, Balinese are cowards. You don’t fight one on one. One on one is okay. The biggest monkey there, no problem. But they don’t do one on one.

  – Ruggiero

  It wasn’t just the inmates and guards who Laskar terrorised – there was also anarchy within its own ranks. Gang member Bambang had his eye gauged out with a sickle and his arms slashed, before he was dragged a few hundred metres up the road outside the jail and his body dumped in a ditch. A passing motorist spotted him, covered in blood and unconscious but still breathing, early the next morning.

  Laskar’s biggest and most lucrative job in Hotel K was providing protection for drug dealer Arman. The dealer and the gang had struck a deal to make them both lots of money, by turning Arman into the sole drug dealer, crushing anyone else who dared try selling to the inside market. Laskar enabled Arman to fulfil his wish to become Hotel K’s drug lord. He was selling huge quantities of drugs inside and outside, paying Laskar for protection, and prisoners and guards to work as couriers, supplying bars and clubs across Bali.

  Arman was making at least 100 million rupiah [$13,000] a day, sometimes 300 million [$39,000]. Many times I saw the guy folding up a whole lot of money. He sold shabu, heroin, ecstasy, ganja, hashish, cocaine, everything.

  The whole block worked for Arman. All the guards got money from him. So, by any chance, if the police intend to come inside here to search, he was the first one to know about it. There were ten telephones inside the block. It was very well-organised. But it was Laskar who gave him such autonomy, you know. Of course he paid Laskar. They go inside, they go in the block, they could have a hit on the pipe, whatever, and they go back out. They take ten grams, twenty grams, outside to sell.

  It was a big business. They sold one hundred grams of shabu a day inside and outside. The market inside is one tenth of it. He sold inside maybe ten, fifteen grams between just the foreigners who buy one gram a day. They buy smack or shabu every day. Plus there’s all the people ins
ide who are buying to sell in a visit. Many of my Swedish friends come: ‘Can I get two grams shabu?’ ‘Okay.’ She comes in, I give her a kiss, give to her, she gives me money and goes home.

  The guards love it. They carry money outside, get paid one million. Bring drugs inside, get two million. Their wage is one million a month. But they bring one little thing inside and they get two million. Fuck, I’d do it every day. They cannot stop corruption in a place where the salary is so low.

  – Ruggiero

  For sure, one hundred per cent, Arman paid the jail officers. Everybody knew he was continually busy in his room, always smoking, smoking, and no problems. The guards go and smoke in Arman’s cell. There were quite a few guards in Bali who like shabu . Mostly, in Bali they didn’t like heroin; most guards like ecstasy and shabu because afterwards they’re still fit, no sleeping. Shabu is vitamin A – it makes you active.

  – Thomas

  Agung Aseng mainly went to jail to collect the gang’s huge weekly payment of protection money. Cash flowed as freely as the drugs and everyone was in for a cut, including police. A rumour circulated the jail that Poldabes, a Denpasar police station, was supplying confiscated drugs to Arman to sell for them. This was confirmed one afternoon when Englishman Steve Turner bought a few ecstasy pills from one of Arman’s boys, who walked around the jail selling pills from his pocket. Steve was sitting on the grass with a group of westerners when he looked at the pills and leaped up yelling, ‘They’re mine! It’s my shit, he’s selling my shit’.