Bali 9: The Untold Story Read Online Free PDF

his teenage years to build a reputation as a big-time drug warlord or godfather, is preposterous. The fights that Chan usually found himself in were not even started by him or his friends.
    ‘He wasn’t the one to go out and start trouble,’ says the friend. In fact, more often than not, he was misconstrued as being a big bully when he was just having a bit of a laugh at someone else’s expense. ‘He was the class clown. He made a lot of people laugh. He mucked around. He was witty. He had all these jokes.’ It’s just if you weren’t on his side, you didn’t often find them very funny.
    After swapping schools, Chan seemed to knuckle down a bit more—for a little while, at least—and would even acknowledge his old adversaries when he spotted them. He’d nod, and they’d nod too, but neither side seemed keen to stop for a chat. Time had moved on, and the past stayed where it belonged.
    It was usually in the Strathfield area, where hordes of youths would sit on seats and just while the world away, that you might run into Chan and his mates. They’d meet before or after work, or even during work hours for those without a job or on casual employment. They’d just hang out, having a laugh and carrying on, much like other youths scattered across the big Sydney area. Chan and his friends would buy food from one of the takeaway joints nearby, wander the shopping centre aimlessly and catch a movie on some days.
    Some of those Chan would hang out with were old friends like Myuran Sukumaran and Si Yi Chen, who, Chan told police, had been his mates since school. Sukumaran, who sometimes used the name Mark, was born a few years earlier than Chan, in April 1981, to parents Sam and Rajini in London. He was the eldest of three children, with a younger sister and brother. He didn’t have the same profile as Chan in the local area. Sukumaran spent most of his days working, after graduating from Homebush Boys High School. First up he worked for ten months in the passport office inSydney, before going to a bank and then a finance company during 2003, up until November 2004. He boasted a monthly salary of $2500.
    Sukumaran was physically bigger and more imposing than Chan, had a penchant for shaving his head, and had a big scar down the back of his neck. He could appear threatening, scary even, and always looked older than he was. But he kept his own counsel, comfortably sitting in the background, allowing others to do the talking. He’d been like that for years, but it was that personality trait which evaded intelligence detection for a while both in Australia and overseas. Australian officers had never heard his name, despite knowing of and having dossiers on many of his colleagues, and Indonesian surveillance teams invariably called him ‘the black-skinned man’, ‘the negro’ and ‘the dark man’. No one knew his name for a long time. And that’s how Myuran Sukumaran seemed to like it.
    Si Yi Chen was a year younger than Chan, born on 19 March 1985 in Guangzhou, China, to parents Edward Chen and Jian Yun Gao, who then settled in Doonside in Sydney. He was an only child; solid, almost pudgy, with a fat, round face. Apart from that, not a lot stood out about the twenty-year-old who always seemed happier to let the conversation swirl around him. He was there, but never the ringleader; in the background, rarely giving his opinion.
    Chen had a regular job, in a mobile phone shop, and was earning about $2000 each month. He spent hisspare time hanging out with his friends. One of them worked with Andrew Chan at the catering company at the Sydney Cricket Ground. He was a young man from Quakers Hill called Matthew Norman.
    Matthew Norman and Andrew Chan, along with Martin Stephens and Renae Lawrence, were employed casually and worked on and off at one of Eurest’s Sydney sites—the Sydney Cricket Ground and Aussie Stadium. Eurest is a big food service company which supplies, prepares and serves food at functions. It has a big