Hotel Kerobokan (15 page)

There was one guard called Fisheyes. When he was young, he was a real motherfucker
.

– Thomas

Fisheyes was one of the guards who enjoyed punishing and inflicting pain on inmates with his electric stick. He would walk around jabbing people on the arms or legs and stomach to amuse himself. The inmates would reel away in pain. But it would bring a smile to Fisheyes’s face. Other times, if Fisheyes or other guards caught somebody breaking the rules or causing a problem, they’d beat them with a rattan stick, throwing in a few electric shocks for good measure. Fisheyes often used
shabu
and other drugs, but if you weren’t on the right side of him or paying him off, or if he was just bored, he would wander around checking prisoners for drugs and if he caught one, punishment and pain would follow.

When eight bosses of the gang Laskar Bali were sentenced to Hotel K, the power politics in the jail changed overnight. Laskar was no ordinary Indonesian gang. It was one of the toughest and most brutal, and bashings were part of their daily activities. The fear of them was such that they took over Hotel K. Not only were prisoners terrified of them, guards were too. Crossing Laskar resulted in swift and brutal retaliation – inside or outside the jail. Such was its power, the gang would often be doing something illegal in their block, like using drugs, and one of the gang members would simply lock down the block so no-one could get inside. When this happened, an unsuspecting guard was sometimes accidentally locked inside the block. But there was nothing the guard could do until someone came and let him out.

Kerobokan is the only jail where the prisoners totally control the jail. Prisoners have the key of the block. Once I see guard closed inside the block. He cannot get out and had to wait two hours. A prisoner finally comes and opens the door and he can go out. Yeah. That time Kerobokan was like that. Prisoners had full power, you know. Total control
.

– Juri, Italian inmate

In jail, there’s not much happening any day. Sometimes you just look in the fish pond and you see fucking frog eggs, everybody is looking at these fucking frog eggs and studying these frog eggs for half an hour. Just looking and wondering … so when Amrozi is coming in with guns and everything, it’s a big story, it’s something to look at, for sure
.

– Thomas

It was like a movie. There was a helicopter, so many cars escorting. I was inside the block when Amrozi arrived. There was too much crowd, like a football match was going to begin. Everybody was in front of the windows, watching
.

– Den

Sirens whirring faintly in the distance grew louder by the second as the police convoy carrying the terrorist Amrozi sped towards Hotel K. By the time the armoured cars and motorbikes arrived in a blaze of red flashing lights and screaming sirens, almost all inmates had gathered to watch the spectacle. In the blue room, people were leaping up to look through the doors and windows. At least one couple, a good-looking Argentinean drug dealer in his early twenties, Frederico, and his long-term Israeli girlfriend, used the minutes of distraction for some quick sex on the floor.

But most were glued to the scene as Amrozi, handcuffed and surrounded by police with machine guns, climbed out of the police van and walked into the office to check in. For months his grinning face had been splashed on the front pages of newspapers. Prisoners were leaping on each others’ shoulders to get a good look at Bali’s most hated man. Hundreds more stood clinging to the fences near their blocks, or hung off them for a higher vantage point. Many stood around on the grass in an angry mob shouting, ‘Kill him, kill him!’ as police corralled them at least twenty-five metres back from the terrorist.

The 41-year-old Muslim mechanic was despised by the Balinese for his key role in two nightclub bombings in Kuta, which killed two hundred and two people, decimating tourism and wiping out hundreds of local businesses. Amrozi’s flagrant glee afterwards turned him into the smiling monster of the blasts. He cheered and gave the thumbs up to the judge and the victims’ families when he was sentenced to death, two days before checking into Hotel K. Now the smiling assassin would be living among the Balinese. Riots by Balinese prisoners or Amrozi-sympathising Muslims were feared.

‘Kill him, kill him, kill him!’ prisoners started yelling again as Amrozi came back out. His hair was cut razor short, but his Muslim beard was left unshaven. Surrounded by police, guards and head
tamping
inmate
Pemuka
Saidin, Amrozi walked across the path from the offices to the tower block that housed a new top security cell. The walls were freshly painted white and the floor tiled grey. The only furniture was a metal bed frame with a thin green carpet laid on top as a makeshift mattress. A floral-patterned pillow fluffed up on the bed was a hint of some sympathy towards him inside Hotel K. It had been donated by a Muslim inmate. But it was the only splash of colour in the stark cell. Two small barred windows let in a little light. In the corner was a squat toilet and concrete wash basin. Amrozi would be banned from mixing with all other inmates and locked up twenty-four hours a day, with only rare, court-approved visits with family. Or so it was supposed to be.

A guard followed the terrorist into the cell with four white plastic bags of his belongings, including traditional Muslim garb and a Koran. In one swift move he put them down, turned around and walked out of there, swinging shut the barred green door and locking it with two large industrial padlocks. As the police filed out, the guard locked two more padlocks: one on the front door of the tower block and another on the gate to the steel picket fence surrounding it. Outside, the inmates were still waiting to watch the police convoy leave. But then the 5.30 pm lockup bells started to ring and they began walking to their cells for the night. Today’s show was over. Tomorrow they’d be back to watching fish eggs.

Within a couple of days, many Balinese and western prisoners were displaying their anger by hurling stones at the bomber’s tower as they walked past on their way to the blue room, and by wearing black T-shirts, designed and cut in Hotel K’s printing factory, with orange and yellow ‘Fuck terrorist’ slogans slashed across the front.

A second terrorist, Abdul Aziz, best known by his self-created title Imam Samudra, meaning ‘preacher of the oceans’, checked in a month later. Swarming police and a scrum of journalists circled him as he walked from the police van and through Hotel K’s front door. Journalists yelled questions, but ‘Allah is great. Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar’ was his only response. It was the same chant he’d screamed over and over in court, displaying only glee for the mass killings he’d choreographed, right down to selecting the nightclubs, recruiting the suicide bombers and designating Amrozi to buy the chemicals to make the bomb. When Samudra checked in, a new era of terrorist teaching began in Hotel K, with the killer preaching his beliefs every chance he got.

He was put in a cell next to Amrozi’s at the front of the tower block. It was a room with a view, giving him a platform to lecture to anyone walking past. He looked directly across at the junction of the path and the doors to the offices, where prisoners usually farewelled their visitors. If couples dared to kiss goodbye, he’d scream at them through his barred window in response to their forbidden public display. When female inmates walked past, he’d intimidate them by angrily screaming, ‘Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar’, because they weren’t shrouded from head to toe.

By then, Hotel K housed thirty-five terrorists involved in the nightclub blasts. Thirty were there on lesser charges, such as working as drivers or sheltering the bombers. These inmates were all locked in Block J, near the mosque. The five key players were caged separately. The death row trio – Samudra, Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas – were in cells inside the water tower. Previously, these cells had been used for everything from isolating prisoners, to functioning as a small shop, a library and VIP rooms. Former Bali governor Ida Bagus Oka had spent time in a VIP tower cell during his embezzlement case. He was notorious for giving the nod to re-zone sacred land for controversial multi-million-dollar building projects, earning him the nickname ‘Mr OK’ and fuelling widespread suspicion that he took lucrative backhanders. With the help of his lawyer, he was exonerated on the embezzlement charges.

He [the judge] claimed the verdict was based solely on legal considerations, and not because, as many people have speculated, the judges had been bribed or too intimidated to convict the powerful Oka.

–
Jakarta Post
, 9 April 2002

Before it was modified into maximum-security cells for the terrorists, the tower had been used for storing axes, grass slashers and other gardening equipment. The walls were rebuilt to eradicate any face-to-face contact and the terrorists had to shout out to hear each other. Outside, the metal picket fence topped with barbed wire created an outdoor pen. Behind the tower were a further four cells used for isolating inmates. Two of these were now occupied by the other two key terrorists – Mubarok, and Amrozi’s younger brother, Ali Imron, both of whom were serving life sentences.

Despite being locked away in the tower, the terrorists had an overwhelming presence. Their fanatical beliefs were penetrating the jail, eagerly soaked up by bored, uneducated and easily impressed Muslim guards and inmates who were in awe of the terrorists. Guards on tower duty would sit in the hot sun for hours talking to the terrorists. The most blatantly star-struck guard was Dedi, who trailed behind them like a puppy when they walked across to the mosque each day. Amrozi and Samudra would sit like celebrities talking to fans in front of the mosque before midday prayers. For drug dealers, petty thieves and card sharks, it was something new. Mingling with some of the world’s most notorious terrorists gave a boring day a bit of zing. Tommy, a 22-year-old ecstasy dealer, soaked it all up like a sponge. He was soon working for Samudra; ironing his clothes, buying food for him at the canteen, and selling scented massage oil around the jail to raise cash for further terrorist attacks. The awestruck boy, who’d been less than devout before the terrorists checked in, was now fanatical, insisting that his fiancée wear full Muslim dress and cover her face. She obeyed him for her visits, but tore off the garb as soon as she walked outside Hotel K. Their usual sex in the blue room stopped abruptly, and they no longer even kissed goodbye.

Early one morning, all five terrorists walked the fifty metres along the path from their tower cells past the canteen, to the mosque. It was the first time they were all allowed out together. They stood hugging in front of the mosque; it was the end of the Ramadan fast. Never failing to seize a chance to preach, Samudra began to call out, ‘Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar’. The jail boss was shocked to see how easily Samudra incited the others – more than four hundred prisoners screamed back, ‘Allah Akbar’. The boss hadn’t had any sense of the insidious influence the terrorists were having in his jail until that moment. It was a nasty shock.

He took swift action to tighten security. He transferred Dedi to a jail in Java, as a stark warning to all guards not to get too close to the terrorists. He moved Samudra to a cell at the back of the tower. He restricted them to one hour of sun every second day in the tower pen and permitted mosque visits on Fridays only. Life got tough for the terrorists – the way it was supposed to have been from the outset. They were served slop prison food in tins pushed into their cells three times a day, now rarely supplemented by canteen fare. Visits with their families were also curtailed.

From then on, the death row trio spent their days in their cells praying, reading religious texts, and yelling through the walls to each other or to the endless rotation of inmates doing stints in one of the two vacant isolation cells out the back. But the isolation did nothing to impede Samudra spreading his message of hate. He spoke to fellow fanatics on his mobile phone, but, most dangerously, had wide-sweeping access to people in cyberspace. Initially, he used fellow inmate Iwan’s laptop, after the Muslim drug dealer was elected spokesman for the terrorists and officially allowed into their cells. Samudra used it to enter chat rooms, where he would recruit terrorists and raise cash. Agung Setyadi, a lecturer in economics at Semarang State University, was one cyber recruit who did his bit for terrorism. Samudra sent him $470 to buy a laptop, which the lecturer sent via motorcycle courier under his daughter’s name, Annisa, to a Hotel K residence that housed unmarried guards.

At the house, Muslim guard Beni Irawan was ready to collect it. He was motivated to help the terrorists by a personal vendetta against the Balinese. He had been viciously bashed by Bali’s Laskar gang members for refusing to let them out of jail one night, and the incident was simply dismissed. If nobody was going to punish the Balinese gang, Beni would avenge himself. He wrapped the laptop in newspaper and delivered it to Samudra in his cell whenever the terrorist asked for it.

While the Indonesian legal system kept granting appeals and extending his life, Samudra was using his time to direct the killing of another twenty-three people. Sitting on his bed in his tower cell, he recruited three suicide bombers for the second round of bomb blasts in Bali, in 2005. The guard, Beni Irawan, was later sentenced to five years jail for giving him the laptop, and lecturer Agung Setyadi got six years for sending it.

One of the 2002 Bali bombers used a laptop smuggled to him in jail to help organize the triple suicide blasts that rocked the resort island last year, Indonesian Police say.… ‘Imam Samudra directed the fundraising for the second Bali bombing,’ cyber crime unit police chief Petrus Golose said.

–
Reuters
, 24 August 2006

The police recently revealed that Imam Samudra had recruited the perpetrators of the second Bali bombing through the Internet.