Jailed on Party Island for 20 Years, Last of the Bali 9 Close to Return

On April 8, 2005, 19-year-old labourer Scott Rush left Australia for the first time to visit Bali.

The troubled teenager from Brisbane, who had already racked up a string of criminal convictions, had always dreamt of a holiday on Indonesia’s party island, but was broke.

An opportunity presented itself in a local bar when he was offered to go on an all-expenses-paid trip with his school friend Czugaj, then 18, by Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese-born Australian, who claimed he had loads of cash but no one to go with.

The offer, which Rush and Czugaj later insisted in court was not made clear until they got to Bali, came with strings attached: they would help smuggle heroin back to Sydney. They would be paid A$10,000 each on delivery, and their families would be killed if they refused.