Aussie crawls through drain in Bali jailbreak

AN Australian man with just two months and 15 days left to serve is one of four foreign inmates who escaped from Bali’s Kerobokan prison through a drain yesterday.

Shaun Edward Davidson, 32, from Perth, was serving a 12-month sentence after being convicted of using fraudulent travel documents.

He was also fined $10,000. Officials said his sentence was almost finished.

He was wanted in WA on drug charges and would have been deported at the end of his sentence.

Bali corrections authorities confirmed that Davidson, a Bulgarian, an Indian and a Malaysian man were missing from the jail yesterday.

Authorities believe the men burrowed out through a 50-75cm water drainage tunnel, about 15m long, which came out near an unmanned guard tower.

Staff shortages meant there were no guards in the tower and CCTV cameras appeared not to have been working.

Kerobokan jail Governor Tony Nainggolan said the men might have been planning the escape for some time because they had started changing their appearance, growing beards, moustaches and sideburns.

Special crime division deputy director Ruddi Setiawan said the men would have emerged from the tunnel with dirty clothes and people on the outside may have helped them. The area was crowded with commuters at that time of day.

Details are still sketchy about exactly how the escape occurred.

It is believed that at the time of their escape there was torrential rain.

The tunnel ran from behind the jail clinic and under the jail wall to the outside.

The other three escapees are Dimitir Nikolon Ilev, a Bulgarian on charges of ATM theft, Sayed Muhammad Said, an Indian drug smuggler, and Tee Kok Ming, from Malaysia, on drug charges. They were serving sentences of between seven and 14 years.