The imminent release of the nine surviving Bali inmates has reignited debate over the role of a father and Australian police in alerting Indonesian authorities to the drug trafficking plot, leading to two executions and long imprisonments.
Lee Rush, father of jailed Bali Nine member Scott Rush, contacted the Australian Federal Police to request that his son be prevented from leaving Australia, desperate to prevent him from becoming involved in any drug-related activity.
That contact helped expose the group’s 2005 plot to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Indonesia to Australia.
The AFP passed this information on to Indonesian authorities, who attacked the group holding Scott Rush, who is still serving a life sentence in Indonesia along with Matthew Norman, Martin Stephens, Si Yi Chen and Michael Czugaj.
Scott Rush’s lawyer claimed in 2005 that the AFP had reneged on promises to prevent the group from leaving Australia and instead allowed them to fly to a country they knew could execute smugglers.
Subsequent arrests at Bali’s Denpasar airport and elsewhere in Indonesia foiled the plot and ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death.
Both were executed by firing squad in April 2015.
In 2015, the AFP denied moral complicity in that ruling, saying Indonesian authorities were acting based on more information about the group than Lee Rush’s simple tip-off.
‘I want to take the pressure off Scott Rush’s father. Much of the way it has been reported is that his tip-off led to this. It wasn’t like that. “I feel sorry for Mr. Rush that he has portrayed himself this way,” said the then AFP commissioner, Andrew Colvin, at a press conference.
“The AFP was already aware of and had begun investigating what we believed to be a syndicate that was actively recruiting couriers to import narcotics into Australia at the time of Mr Rush’s contact with the AFP.”
Scott Rush (pictured left) with his father Lee Rush, who tipped off the Australian Federal Police about his son’s drug smuggling intentions.
Commissioner Colvin also insisted there was insufficient evidence to arrest members of the Bali Nine before they left Australia, and that allowing them to travel exposed the syndicate as a whole.
«At that time we were working with a very incomplete image. “We didn’t know everyone involved, we didn’t know all the plans, we didn’t even know what the illicit product was,” Commissioner Colvin said.
He said it was “operationally appropriate” for the AFP to cooperate and seek help in Indonesia.
Asked why the AFP did not ask Indonesian authorities to allow drug couriers to fly back to Australia and arrest them, Commissioner Colvin said that was outside Australia’s jurisdiction.
“This is the harsh reality for Australians who travel overseas and become involved in serious crime,” he said.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan then indicated that the AFP needed more information about the union in general.
Scott and Lee Rush (also pictured at right, Scott’s mother Christine) talk in 2005, shortly after the arrest of the Bali Nine.
“To allow them to return to Australia, we might have taken a couple of mules, but we wouldn’t have been able to have any evidence in relation to the syndicate as a whole,” he said.
However, Phelan admitted that he felt conflicted when handing over the information to the Indonesians.
“I’ve been agonizing over this for 10 years and every time I look back I still think it’s a difficult decision,” he said.
“But given what I knew at that particular time, and what our officers knew, I would have a hard time convincing myself to make a different decision.
“I have seen the misery that drugs cause tens of thousands of families in this country.”
Pictured, top left to right: Myuran Sukumaran, Scott Rush, Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen, Renae Lawrence and bottom: Si Yi Chen, Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Martin Stephen and Andrew Chan.
Phelan said he had no illusions about what the release of information might mean.
“Yes, I knew very well that by handing over the information and requesting surveillance and requesting evidence collected, if they were found in possession of drugs they would take action and expose them to the death penalty,” he said.
“I knew it, I went in with an open mind.”
Of the other Bali Nine members arrested in the original raid, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died of cancer in 2018, while Renae Lawrence was freed the same year after her life sentence was reduced to 20 years on appeal.
Daily Mail readers commenting on Bali Nine stories have had mixed reactions to the alleged involvement of Lee Rush and the AFP.
‘Tipped off by Scott Rush’s father who, I believe, begged the federal police to intervene and stop his son from destroying his life. As a father, I always felt that the FP betrayed that poor father,” commented one of them.
“Rightly or wrongly, I can’t help but get angry about that.”
Mick Keelty was commissioner of the Australian Federal Police at the time of the arrest of the Bali Nine.
‘What a betrayal by the AFP, they knew what would happen to them if they were arrested in Bali, why not arrest them when they arrived in Australia?’ asked another.
“There were potential deaths in the future with heroin, but the Bali attackers who killed intentionally served less time.”
Some blamed the AFP commissioner at the time of the arrest, Mick Keelty.
“Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty was solely responsible for this chaos and the subsequent executions of Chan and Sukumaran,” wrote one reader.
‘He alerted Indonesian police to the plot to smuggle heroin into Australia, knowing full well the consequences for those Australians.
‘The word AUSTRALIANS should not be overlooked. “It would have been very easy to arrest them all in Australia and they would have been subject to Australian law.”
“Taking drugs out of a country should not have resulted in the deaths of Chan and Sukumaran,” said another.
“Clearly all of the Bali 9 could have been rehabilitated… they were so young, stupid and naive.”
The Australian government has now requested that the remaining Bali Nine be allowed to return home, and Indonesian authorities are expected to allow their extradition later this year.