AFTER LIVING THE HIGH LIFE AS A DRUG LORD IN BALI, ONE DEALER REVEALS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET ARRESTED ‘The worst thing was the hits on the head – they have a big piece of wood... solid, heavy’
READER’S TIP
BRITISH gran Lindsay Sandiford is facing a firing squad unless her appeal against a death sentence for drug smuggling to Bali succeeds.
The 56-year-old was convicted of trying to enter the paradise isle with more than 5kg of cocaine – worth £1.6million – in May last year.
But when things go wrong on Bali – as Sandiford knows – they go HORRIBLY wrong.
And the local police and judiciary can be every bit as bent as the criminals they prey on. In our second extract from her new book
Australian journalist Kathryn Bonella interviews one of the island’s ex-pat drug dealers about the day his luxury life was turned upside down.
Trembling
BRAZILIAN drug dealer Alberto was at his peak – rolling in cash, swamped by beautiful women and with all the boys’ toys he could wish for.
He was up there with the top dealers on Bali – Island of the Gods.
Along with his pals sealed their deals at exclusive clubs like the Nikko Bali Resort or Canngu Clubs – where only the richest could afford to be members.
He says: “There was a time I could say if you snorted coke here in Bali, there was a 50 per cent chance it would have come through my hands.
“We had that much here and we had the best quality. A lot of people made millions through my hands.”
But as much as dealing in paradise opens up a life of orgies, parties, surfing and glamour, it has a very dark side if you get busted – with the most draconian sentences in the world and a notorious brutal and corrupt police force, as Alberto discovered.
He added: “Bali can be heaven one minute and hell in the next.”
One day, out of the blue, he is arrested by Bali police officers and, handcuffed and blindfolded, he is driven away.
Not to a police station but to a house way out among the rice paddies. He knows he is about to be tortured for information on other dealers.
Alberto flinched as the cops grabbed his arms and shoved him into a room, pushing him to sit down on the edge of a bed.
A door slammed shut, then boom, it was on, fists raining brutal blows into his stomach, ribs and back, a hand slapping his face, as someone else used a plank of wood to slam into his head.
He was helpless – the handcuffs preventing him from even lifting his arms to shield his face. It was against every human instinct, but he had to just surrender his body to the blows.
Even gritting his teeth, he could not stop crying out in pain.
After an hour, the cops slammed the door behind them – leaving him slumped on the bed, hurting badly and trembling.
He knew that was only round one; that they would be back to hurt him again, until they broke him down into helping them set someone else up.
Right now Andre, who owned the pills, and Rafael, whose name the cops had already tossed out, were blissfully unaware of his predicament, oblivious to how close they might be to falling into the same dark hole if their friend broke.
As Alberto sat there, trying to slow his breathing, he was praying he had the grit to take whatever was coming without capitulating.
He said: “The worst thing was the hits on the head with a wooden stick. They have this big piece of wood, solid, heavy.
“They hit like on the side of the ear, on the top of the head, close to my forehead, on the back of my head.
“One guy hitting and another guy punching on the ribs or slapping the face, together, two guys, at the same time. My hands handcuffed behind my back.
“They hit me for one hour, two hours, then they go out of the room, and lumps come up on my head, and then they come again two hours later, and hit the lumps.
“That’s f***ing painful. You want to cry; they make you see stars. That was heavy. That’s the real pain.”
Brutal
Whenever they left the room, Alberto slumped on the edge of the bed, feeling fainter and sicker, but his mind was trying to figure a way out.
So far offering cash hadn’t worked. They wanted to create a domino effect because it meant far more cash in the end, as well as a bunch of high-profile arrests.
He knew these brutal bashings would eventually end, but if he turned rat he knew his soul would never recover.
So he kept stoically denying and absorbing the pain, trying to figure out a way to end the torture as fast as possible.
He said: “All the time I was sitting on the bed, handcuffed and blindfolded, just sitting thinking, ‘How am I going to get out of this?’
“I would hear the door opening again, I would go, ‘Here we go again.’ I could see through the bottom of the blindfold, the feet arriving, the leather sandals, so I knew if the same guys came back.
“Then they would start all over again, bang, hit me on the head, bam, slap on the face, bam, punch in the ribs, saying, ‘Come on, use your tongue, say some names, help us to help you, come on,’ and just hit, hit, hit.
“Sometimes, they put a piece of wood on top of my bare toes, and one guy comes with a real strong kick, bam, and you see stars.
“So in the end, after two days, they realised I wasn’t going to talk or set anyone up – I was already a f***ing zombie – and they finally came in, saying, ‘OK, let’s go. You’re not going to help us so you’re going to go to jail for 10, 15 years, is that what you want?’
“I was like, ‘OK, if that’s it, that’s it, but please take me to the police station. I wish I could help you, but I can’t.”
Alberto eventually paid the police and judiciary almost £20,000 as a bribe.
Instead of an eight or 10-year sentence in the hellhole Kerobokan prison, he got one and a half years.
On release, he admits his first instinct was to do one last big deal and flee with the money… but resisted temptation and remains on the island legitimately teaching people to surf.