Jakarta. Indonesia is mulling transferring the five remaining Australian prisoners who were part of the so-called Bali Nine drug smuggling group back to their home country, according to a minister.

A group of nine Australians got caught trying to smuggle 8.2 kilograms of heroin from Indonesia to Australia in 2005. This group is popularly known as the “Bali Nine." Indonesia already executed the ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in 2015. Member Renae Lawrence received a 20-year sentence and was released in 2018 after several remissions. Bali Nine’s Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died from stomach cancer while serving life imprisonment in the same year.

The remaining prisoners, Si Yi Chen, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Matthew Norman, and Martin Stephens, are currently serving life imprisonment in Indonesia. 

Legal Affairs Minister Supratman Andi Agtas recently revealed that Indonesia would possibly send these five prisoners back to Australia. Supratman, however, admitted that he was still consulting with Chief Legal Affairs Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra and making the necessary assessments to report back to President Prabowo Subianto.

“We will consult [the results of] our assessments [on a possible transfer] with Mr. President Prabowo Subianto, so Indonesia will be able to make the best decision,” Supratman said on Monday.

Supratman claimed that Prabowo had already agreed to send back the prisoners to Australia “in principle” as Indonesia seeks to maintain diplomatic relations with its close neighbor. But Indonesia to this day still does not have a procedure on transferring foreign national prisoners. He added: "While [the transfer] is important to maintain good relations, we want to make sure that they respect the Indonesian judicial process.”

In other words, the transfer does not mean that the five Bali Nine drug smugglers are immediately free. They still have to continue to serve their life sentence in Australia. Supratman also revealed that the government also sought to bring back its prisoners who were held abroad.

“We also want our Indonesian prisoners to return back here if that transfer does happen. But we are still working on the mechanism,” the minister said.

Supratman’s statement came not long after the Prabowo government agreed to return Filipina drug convict Mary Jane Veloso. 

Prabowo not long ago met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) talks in Peru. Prabowo admitted that their bilateral ties had seen its ups-and-downs, although he did not directly mention Bali Nine -- at least according to the parts of the meeting shown to the press. Prabowo also told Albanese that his government takes the war against drug crimes seriously.

Bilateral diplomatic ties did get rocky when Indonesia executed Bali Nine’s Chan and Sukumaran. Tony Abott, who was the Australian prime minister at the time, called the executions “cruel and unnecessary” because both men had already gone through rehabilitation.

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