After nearly two decades behind bars, the five remaining members of the so-called bali nine have been freed and flown back to Australia. Scott Rush, Matthew Norman, Siyi Chen, martin Stephens, and Michael Czugaj were serving life sentences in Indonesia for their roles in a drug smuggling plot in Bali in 2005. But after years of advocacy from the Australian government. A breakthrough was announced this afternoon that the group had been flown back to Australia.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Well, let's bring in our correspondent, Bill Birtles, in Indonesia.
00:05Bill, it's taken years of advocacy to get to this point.
00:09What got the deal over the line?
00:11Nikari, it was the insistence from the Indonesian side that the men are being transferred to
00:16Australia as prisoners rather than released.
00:19Now, we know this agreement was signed on Friday in a virtual meeting between Home Affairs
00:24Minister Tony Burke and Indonesia's top law minister, Yusrul Mahindra.
00:28That paved the way for these five men to leave Indonesia in a pretty similar way to
00:32how they arrived on a commercial Jetstar flight into Darwin earlier today, although this time
00:37they were accompanied by three consular officials.
00:40But the sticking point for many weeks of negotiations was whether or not they could continue to
00:46be imprisoned or at least have the status of prisoners initially while in Australia.
00:51Legal experts said that wasn't possible, but Minister Mahindra here in Jakarta insists
00:56to the ABC that these five men did leave the country as prisoners.
01:02They were transferred as prisoners, even though it looks awfully like them being released
01:08and deported, because as far as the Australian government is concerned, now having arrived
01:13in Australia, these five are free men.
01:16Nonetheless, Jakarta says they were transferred as prisoners and that it was enough to allow
01:21this to go ahead.