Hotel Kerobokan

by Kathryn Bonella

  – Denpost, May 2006

  After every outside arrest that led a trail to Hotel K, police were able to secure a warrant to raid the jail. But in their endless raids of Arman’s cell, they only once uncovered drugs. One of Arman’s men had tipped off police that he kept a supply of drugs hidden underneath a cleverly designed false squat toilet, purpose-built to hide drugs. Previous raids had always failed to uncover them. But, with the inside information, they found a huge stash in his cell toilet, including cocaine, heroin, inhaling equipment, ecstasy pills, several currencies of cash – twenty-nine million rupiah, US$500, €5000 and A$500 – and even a shotgun. Arman confessed it all belonged to him.

  Each time Arman faced new charges, he was arrested and taken to the police station, but the charges often disappeared, costing him tens of thousands of dollars. He paid $94,000 for one big ecstasy case against him to go away.

  But there were times when Arman’s cash didn’t work, when a case was too high-profile or the wrong police were involved, and he was taken to court on new charges. There were always several cases pending against him, and his ten-year sentence escalated to twenty-six years during his time in Hotel K. But it didn’t deter him. He was making $10,000 a day and could come and go whenever he liked. Before the raid prompted by the arrest of Pak Giri, Arman had had his usual warning phone call from a guard, who told him the bad news that Pak Giri had been arrested, that he’d been named and that police were now on their way to search his cell. Arman was pissed off and alerted his men. They started quickly taking his drugs out of the ceiling and from a concrete bunker in the cell, putting whatever they could into a sealed box and dropping it into the sewerage drains, to retrieve later. They also threw drugs, bongs, foils and straws out through the window at the back of the cell. It was a basic rule not to hide drugs in the cell during a raid. If the drugs were found in a neutral spot, police would confiscate the drugs but no-one would get charged.

  Some inmates seized this opportunity and ran behind the cellblocks to scoop up as many drugs as they could before the police arrived. In a raid a month earlier, police had found a prisoner, Abdul, a motorcycle thief, lying in a ditch behind Arman’s block, overdosing.

  All inmates knew of the tactic of throwing drugs out the window, and Abdul wasn’t the first to scurry around scooping them up. But when he saw the police, he didn’t have time to hide them. He panicked, and started trying to swallow all the evidence. By the time police got to him, he was having a seizure, with foam pouring out of his mouth. In his clenched fist, they found a gram of heroin, and in his pockets, twenty-five ecstasy pills. He was rushed to Sanglah Hospital, but died on the way.

  What was catastrophic was a convict, involved in vehicle theft cases, named Abdul Habib, jumped into a ditch behind Block E. Quickly police came to the rescue. Apparently the man had just swallowed 25 inex [ecstasy pills]. Habib was rushed to Sanglah Hospital. Sadly though, he couldn’t be saved and died around 5 pm from a drug overdose.

  – Denpost, 28 December 2005

  During the Pak Giri raid, police found four hundred grams of smack behind Arman’s block, which they confiscated. They meticulously searched his cell, but typically found nothing. Police also raided Iwan’s furniture workshop, looking all around his machines. But Iwan had also received a warning phone call and the place was clean. In an earlier raid, he had thrown a tin of 1000 ecstasy tablets on the rubbish heap, but then couldn’t find it. With Thomas’s help, he spent hours looking in tin after tin on the rubbish heap. Eventually, he had no choice but to accept the loss of $20,000 worth of ecstasy tablets. But a local inmate, who worked nearby in the garden, couldn’t believe that a tin filled with 1000 ecstasy pills, worth more than he’d ever make in his life, could really just disappear. He spent two days searching through the garbage and eventually found it. Incredibly, the very honest criminal gave the tin back to Iwan and asked for nothing. As a reward, Iwan gave him a bit of cash and a job in his furniture factory.

  He was stupid to give it back to Iwan. What did he get … a job working for 20,000 rupiah [$2] a day.

  – Thomas

  In the Pak Giri raid, police spent three hours in the men’s blocks, finding some drugs and bongs and arresting six prisoners. They confiscated knives, kerosene stoves, mobile phones, chargers, DVD players, porn DVDs and ledgers of drug sales. They even discovered the three illegal roulette tables that had been hidden in the rarely searched temple. This was a full jail sweep, after Pak Giri, to help win himself a bit of favour, had disclosed to police the widespread drug use and dealing inside Hotel K. When the ex-guard was later sent from the police cells to serve his time back in Hotel K, he had to get protection from Pemuka Saidin.

  During the raid there was also an uneasy tension in Block W. The women were locked up in their block, sitting in their cells, waiting for their turn to be searched. An hour earlier, female guards had come around, telling them not to wear anything sexy in front of the male police officers. Anyone wearing skimpy outfits threw on more clothes.

  Australian Schapelle Corby was always a focal point. Dubbed ‘Ganja Queen’ by the local press, she was a celebrity prisoner after her case made international headlines. She was wearing a singlet and pyjama bottoms. The guards told her she was still looking too sexy, so she put on a bra and her pink fake Chanel sunglasses. All the women had been busy preparing for the raid; hiding their phones, DVD players, chargers and money. In one cell, the women piled all their contraband electrical equipment into a bag and gave it to one of the female guards for safekeeping. Now they waited.

  It began with three loud bangs on the steel door. Police burst in with machine guns, sprinting into the block and yelling and screaming, spreading out to every corner. In front of each cell, several police officers stopped and stood with their guns poised. The women had been ready for it, but it was still an abrupt, brutal change of pace. For those who hadn’t seen a raid before, it was frightening. Even the guards were running around the cells, yelling, ‘Get out, get out, get out!’, ordering all the women to line up for call.

  Once they were standing in their lines, two women from each cell were ordered to go back inside and collect all the keys for the locked cupboards, boxes and drawers. When they returned, police were given bundles of keys to use and started ransacking the cells, picking through clothes, books and toiletries, and throwing everything into huge, jumbled piles in the middle of each cell.

  Several police were using videos cameras to film the raid and occasionally turned their lenses on the line of women. Most turned away, covering their faces, not wanting to be exposed on the television news that night. Schapelle, in particular, hated it, as she was always a target, with photos of her easily selling to the media for big bucks. As she sat in the roll call line, she tried to stay hidden behind a small tree, wearing her sunglasses to mask a nasty eye infection.

  Another foreigner, the Bali Nine’s Renae Lawrence, saw that police had found the bag stashed with electrical goods that the guard had been looking after, including her new portable DVD player. She wasn’t happy. ‘Excuse me, that’s mine,’ she said, picking it up. ‘No, no, we’re just checking for drugs,’ a police officer said. ‘Okay, no problem, I don’t have any,’ she said, putting it back down. Police checked it and said, ‘Okay’. Renae took it back. She was the only inmate to stand up to the police. They took phones, chargers, cash, and gas burners and teaspoons that could potentially be used to heat heroin – although the majority of female inmates only used the gas burners to heat food or boil water for a cup of coffee.

  After a long couple of hours, the raid finished and the police vanished from Block W as fast as they had arrived, streaming out through the steel door and sweeping en masse across the jail lawns towards the front door. But it wasn’t over for the police. Things were about to get nasty. Behind them in the men’s blocks, angry inmates, who were usually locked up during raids, were ready to ambush them. On cue, about eighty men charged at the police, running in a pack, screaming, ‘Motherfuckers, mo
therfuckers!’ and pelting rocks and stones. The swarms of police started running towards the offices.

  All over the world, people hate police. They’re the number one enemy.

  – Juri

  The bitter hatred for police that naturally existed in a jail was exacerbated by their blatant hypocrisy. Most prisoners knew that many police were doing drug deals, using drugs, and even selling the drugs they confiscated from Hotel K.

  Word of mouth in jail was that Arman was selling for some police.

  – Saidin

  The angry stone-throwing was mostly by locals. Brazilian Ruggiero had joined in only for sport – until he spotted the police officer who had arrested and beaten him three years earlier. Anger tore into his guts. He ran like fury and hurled a stone as hard as he could. It missed. But it felt good. He was in the line of rock fire, and ran back for cover.

  Hundreds of rocks were now flying through the air. In a frenzy, the locals were chanting ‘Motherfuckers!’ and furiously hurling stones. Windows were smashing. Police were sprinting towards the exit. One got hit in the back of the head. Another was struck in the neck. It was a war zone. It was mayhem.

  Three police officers suddenly turned and fired their machine guns into the air. Prisoners instinctively froze. For an instant, the yard was still. But the inmates quickly erupted into loud hissing and booing, again screaming, ‘Motherfuckers! Motherfuckers!’ as they started to run. Most police were in the offices by then. Several prisoners chased them right through to the front door, screaming and lobbing stones into the car park.

  It was nice. It broke the boredom.

  – Ruggiero

  CHAPTER 19

  KEROBOKAN CREW

  Every day was a party. When they lock us in the block every day, we had beer, arak, we danced like maniacs. One day I took ecstasy – me, Gabriel and Aris, we were dancing like maniacs – the local people think we’re from another planet. We start dancing while the block’s open, then they lock us inside.

  – Ruggiero

  Of course, in jail we have good time as well, but you can die every second, every minute, you can get killed from someone. You make a small mistake, that’s it. You say one wrong word to someone, you can get killed. From morning, we use Xanax, alcohol, smack, whatever. You forget everything, don’t get stressed.

  – Juri

  With Bali being such a popular holiday destination, with people from all over the world flocking to its beaches and nightclubs to enjoy the party lifestyle, Hotel K inevitably filled up with guests from the farthest corners of the earth – Austria, Germany, China, France, England, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Australia, Argentina, Nepal, Taiwan, Japan, Russia and Sweden.

  Bali is a tourist spot. There, tourists get arrested. Not too much culture, but there was always interesting foreigners in Kerobokan. Everyone is crazy here. Gabriel, Aussie Martin, the guy from Greece, the guy from Russia, from England, from America, from Italy, Argentina, Canada, France, so at least we had crazy people from different parts of the world. Just being a foreigner makes them already more interesting, because the guy from France is going to tell me something about wine; the guy from Hawaii tells me about the surf, the guy from Japan tells me about … da da da, Aussies tell me some stories about Aussieland.

  Did you have any fun times together?

  Yeah, of course. We have three different tribes of foreigners: the ones who like smack, the ones who use other drugs, and the ones who like to drink, and then there are ones who like everything. I was [in] the drinking tribe. I’m the beer man. I think I’ve been an Australian in another lifetime.

  – Ruggiero

  Juri was another who liked to party with the foreigners.

  Yeah, we have a good time … many, many times we have good time. Sometimes, like one New Year Eve, everyone’s cells are open. You can go everywhere, the jail became like big discotheque. Everyone’s cell open until the night after. Twenty-four hours. Every block. You can just walk everywhere. You can smoke joint, take ecstasy. Everything. Everything. It was crazy.

  – Juri

  Most afternoons, the westerners would gather on the grass outside their blocks, drinking beer, smoking dope and listening to techno music on a portable CD player. Mick would play with an inmate’s pet musang (a small cat-like animal), blowing dope in its face to get it stoned; Juri would sleep in the sun after smoking smack in his cell; Ruggiero would drink beers and cook up a barbecue for everyone, pulling beers out of his crate and passing them around. ‘Do you want any drugs?’ he usually asked his guests. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind a line of coke’, they would say. Ruggiero enjoyed playing host, often taking out his guitar and singing. Scottish sailor Robert would usually be passed out drunk on the concrete bench or retelling his story about losing his ship on the China Seas. One of Arman’s boys would walk around selling ecstasy pills from a plastic bag in his pocket, with most digging into their pockets or taking a credit note to buy one or two.

  American big-wave surfer Gabriel was often drunk and high, and would sit around in his bright pink hibiscus-flowered surf shorts and metallic blue sunglasses, with his wavy, long sunbleached hair hanging down his bare back. He sat with his phone in one hand, a beer in the other and a cigarette dangling from his lips. This was a typical wasted afternoon.

  But, in an instant, a relaxed day could turn very tense. One afternoon, the Kerobokan crew was lounging about in the sun when Mick caught a glimpse of Gabriel up in the watchtower. They all turned to see him sitting up there in his blue sunglasses, drinking a can of beer. Freedom was just a jump away. A sudden energy and excitement rippled through the group. But they all bet the American wouldn’t have the guts to do it.

  Gabriel had been mulling over his escape plan for several days. He could just walk through a hole in the inner wall, climb up into the watchtower and jump. It was easy. But the plan would only be viable until the hole in the wall was filled. It had crumbled a few days earlier at the spot where the guard who smuggled in arak had dug a small tunnel under the fence to pull the plastic bags of booze through. Torrential tropical rains had washed away more soil, turning the tunnel into a ravine, and causing the old concrete wall above it to collapse – not for the first or the last time. In a snap decision that afternoon, Gabriel had thrown a few things into a little black backpack, torn two sheets off his bed, walked through the hole in the wall, and across the snake-riddled grass and up into the unused watch-tower.

  We call it the monkey post. If the guards hear this, they don’t like it. But it’s what prisoners call it. It’s mostly empty. The guards don’t sit in the watchtowers, they sit near the kitchen playing cards or drinking, passing the time.

  – Thomas

  Had Gabriel not been so high and drunk, he might have had second thoughts about his escape plan, particularly as he had only five months left to serve. But in his addled state of mind, he made a decision he’d live to regret. He finished four cans of Bintang beer while he waited for two men lingering on the street below to disappear. When they moved he was ready to fly. He abseiled down the two bedsheets he had tied to a concrete post on the tower. When he hit the ground, he tore down the sheets, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and started walking up the road. With his dark sunglasses, his pink hibiscus-patterned surf shorts and his long hair, he looked more like a tourist than a Hotel K escapee. But before he could hail a taxi, freedom was snatched from him.

  A mob of twenty Laskars, guards and local prisoners had seen him escaping and left the jail to chase him up the road. One prisoner tore around the corner on a motorbike and aimed it straight at Gabriel, hitting him hard and knocking him flying into a rice field. The prisoner dropped his bike, ran over to Gabriel and started kicking him in the guts. Within moments, they had circled the American and were viciously kicking and punching him. Gabriel didn’t stand a chance. Typically, the Balinese were fighting in a pack. All he could do was shield his head with his arms. By the time they dragged him back down the road and into Hotel K, he was barely conscious a
nd had deep bloody gashes on his head and face.

  Laskar, guards, people in the street – they were all bashing him. You know how it is in Bali; when they catch a thief, they all beat him up until he dies, then throw him in the garbage truck. They are mean people. They are cowards. If I fight with someone and I have a friend who wants to join me, I say, ‘No, I fight one on one’. Not two on one. They fight as many as possible against one.

  – Ruggiero

  On the way inside with Gabriel, the group pushed past Juri’s mum, who had arrived for a visit, giving her a nasty shock when she saw the familiar face of her son’s cellmate covered in blood. It was a stark reminder of where her youngest child was living. In the blue room, visitors and prisoners had watched the flurry as the mob had sprinted from all directions across the jail to the front door and out into the street. Brazilian Ruggiero had run towards the front door too and had seen them carrying his long-time friend inside. He trailed behind as the Laskars took Gabriel through the blue room and into the security boss’s office, where they threw him down on the tiled floor. Gabriel lay motionless, slipping in and out of consciousness as they continued attacking him; beating him with a stick, kicking and punching him. Ruggiero stood near the door, catching glimpses of the vicious attack and becoming more and more agitated and distressed.

  His head was broken and they would come and kick his head. Then this one guy, this motherfucker who smoked so much shabu his eyes don’t focus, has an iron hammer and he bangs the soul of his feet and his anklebone. A kind of little torture. It was too much. I couldn’t stay still anymore. I went in the room and said, ‘Motherfucker, you have to hit me too’. Then they pushed me out. But they didn’t touch me. They broke his anklebone. They are mean people, they are very mean.