Bali Nine members are back in the arms of their families for first time ...
The freed Bali Nine members are back in the arms of their families and supporters for the first time in almost 20 years.
The five members of the group left Darwin last night and have touched down in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne this morning greeted by family members and supporters at the airports.
Brisbane man Michael Czugaj landed in Brisbane, while Matthew Norman and Si Yi Chen arrived in Melbourne and Martin Stephens landed in Sydney.
The ABC understands Scott Rush was released yesterday, earlier than the others.
Matthew Norman and Si Yi Chen are from New South Wales but early this morning landed in Melbourne, greeted by close friends who have supported them in Bali's Kerobokan jail for the past two decades.
Their freedom came last Sunday when the group was flown from Indonesia to Darwin after a deal was brokered between the Indonesian and Australian Governments to allow them to come home on humanitarian grounds.
The five members of the group were all serving life sentences in jails in Bali and Java after being convicted for their roles in a 2005 plot to smuggle more than 8kg of heroin from Bali to Australia.
All pleas for clemency and a pardon fell on deaf ears until, last month. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese brokered a deal with new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.
Bali Nine pair, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman. (ABC News: Phil Hemingway)
Under the deal, the five were granted their freedom on humanitarian grounds, with the Indonesians saying it was not a pardon.
But they placed no stipulation that once home, the men would need to stay in jail. Instead, they requested that the men continue their rehabilitation and be monitored while in Australia.
The five had been kept at the Howard Springs quarantine detention centre near Darwin since arriving in Australia last Sunday, where they had undergone medical tests and briefings.
Last night the group boarded flights home — the first time they have been in their home states since they took off on their ill-fated drug smuggling plot in April 2005.
The group was arrested in Bali as they were on the cusp of boarding flights to Australia. Four drug mules — Scott Rush, Michael Czugaj, Renae Lawrence and Martin Stephens — were arrested at Bali airport, with more then 8kg of heroin strapped to their bodies. One of the ringleaders, Andrew Chan, was also arrested at the airport.
Myuran Sukumaran, Matthew Norman, Si Yi Chen and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen were arrested a hotel in Kuta with the remnants of the paraphernalia used to strap the drugs to the mules' bodies.
Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death for their role as the ringleaders and were executed in April 2015.
The others, some originally sentenced to death, managed to have their sentences reduced on appeal to life and have been in jails in Bali and Java ever since.
Renae Lawrence, the only member of the group to receive a sentence lesser than life or death, was jailed for 20 years and, after remissions for good behaviour, was released in 2018 and returned home to Newcastle.
Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died in hospital in Jakarta in 2018 from cancer.
The homecoming was agreed upon by Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto, a humanitarian act after his inauguration earlier this year. He also allowed a Philippines prisoner, Mary Jane Veloso, who was on death row in a separate drug smuggling arrest, to return home.
She had been due to be executed alongside Chan and Sukumaran but was spared at the last minute and has remained on death row ever since. She arrived home to the Philippines this week.
A French prisoner, also on death row, is also due to be freed and allowed home under the deal with Indonesia.
