Smugglers Given Phones To Call Contact
The Age
Wednesday April 27, 2005
Australian police will be asked to help trace calls on phones used in the Bali heroin operation
THE organisers of the Bali nine drug ring gave mobile telephones to the Australian smugglers and told them to ring a contact in Australia when they arrived, police revealed last night.Bambang Sugiarto, head of Bali's drug squad, said the smugglers were told to call someone codenamed "Pinocchio" after they arrived at Sydney airport.The telephones were given to the smugglers by the man police are now naming as the syndicate organiser, Myuran Sukumaran, who has refused to give police the pin numbers so they can access the telephones. Lieutenant-Colonel Sugiarto told journalists at Bali's police headquarters, where the nine Australians are being held, that Indonesian police would ask the Australian Federal Police for help to trace the numbers. Bali police say four of the Australians who were arrested at Denpasar airport with 8.3 kilograms of heroin strapped to their bodies have told police details of the bungled drugs operation on the night of April 17.But Colonel Sugiarto said four other Australians, including Sukumaran, who were arrested later in a Bali hotel room, had not been co-operative. The four have been held together in the same cell since their arrests but Sukumaran would now be separated from them. Colonel Sugiarto said this decision followed confirmation that Andrew Chan, who police at first said was the godfather of the syndicate, actually answered to Sukumaran."Chan gave the orders to the smugglers. But the instructions to Chan came from Sukumaran," Colonel Sugiarto said.The colonel also revealed that one of the prisoners, Martin Stephens, 29, had told interrogators that he had overhead Chan say: "The heroin came from Jakarta." Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said on ABC radio yesterday that police knew the origin of the heroin and that it had to be part of a larger consignment. "Obviously you don't just distribute from Burma 10 kilos of heroin. It's obviously come from a much bigger amount," he said. Mr Keelty said the nine could use claims of death threats as a defence but needed to be careful that their allegations tallied with facts police had gathered during the investigation. He appeared to suggest that claims made by some of the nine could be contradicted by evidence gathered in surveillance operations.In Bali, lawyers representing three of the accused said they were confident the alleged heroin smugglers would escape the death sentence because they had been pressured by syndicate bosses. ? The family of Schapelle Corby have angrily denounced a Bali newspaper's claims that she was pregnant to a foreign lover. The newspaper yesterday reported that the 27-year-old Gold Coast woman, who faces life in jail if found guilty of drug smuggling, was rumoured to have fallen pregnant in Denpasar's Kerobokan Prison. Corby's Indonesian brother-in-law, Wayan Widiartha, said the family was outraged by the claim and that Corby was stunned when told of the rumour last week.
© 2005 The Age
