Schapelle’s New Hell “This Could Kill Her”

There are new fears for her life with a top secret plan to transfer her from her jail to a remote prison in Java, reports Corby biographer KATHRYN BONELLA

The nightmare has been fearing for the past five years is now a reality, as a secret document outlining her transfer to a new faraway prison has been leaked exclusively to Woman's Day.

The document, from the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights, confirms Schapefle's worst fears that she will be taken away from her lifeline of family and friends and forced to move to a remote East Javanese jail.

"Hereby ordering the Head of Kerobokan Detention Centre, , Bali, to carry out the transfer of the convict in the name of Sceppele (sic) Corby to be transferred to Women's Detention Centre in Malang, . The order becomes effective from the date the transfer is signed."

The transfer was dated March 2, 2010, and now, a fragile and terrified Schapelle will have to face being ripped from her cell and taken to this new prison without warning.

It is a threat prison officials have held over Schapelle, 32, since she began her 20-year prison sentence, and one she admitted in her book, My Story, caused her nightmares.

"I live in fear that any day I could be plucked from my cell in the dead of the night and taken to another prison in a remote part of ," she said.

"They'll often say:'White monkey, we move you tonight.'"

Now facing that terrible reality, Schapelle will have to come to terms with being separated from her big sister, Mercedes, who has been the one thing keeping her alive in a Balinese prison awash with drugs, corruption and disease. Mercedes has provided Schapelle with decent food, and life-saving medication to treat her sister's increasingly fragile mental state.

But the Indonesian Government initiative to transfer Schapelle to the prison in Java, hundreds of kilometres away from Mercedes' home in Bali, will leave her with no support or protection - and will almost certainly tip her over the edge.

"It terrifies me how she'd react," says Mercedes in an exclusive interview with Woman's Day. Mercedes moved to Bali with her young family when Schapelle was arrested for smuggling a large quantity of marijuana in 2004. "Her mental state is so fragile at the moment.

I hate to think this will happen. If she was moved to East Java I won't be able to move there and uproot my kids yet again, my work, our whole lives." she says. "If they are moving her, I just hope it's to another prison in Bali."

Mercedes and the rest of Schapelle's family have never given up the fight to prove her innocence or their campaign to have her brought back to . But now their hopes have been dashed.

When she is moved to Sukun prison near Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, and in the heart of Muslim East Java, Schapelle will have to share a cell with between three and seven other women.

Prisoners are woken at 5 am for a one-hour prayer session, which is followed by an hour of exercise. They are locked in their cells again at 6pm, with inmates expected to be asleep by 9pm. Inmates are allowed just two visits a week and mobile phones are banned.

Mercedes has no doubt that the move may put her life at risk. Schapelle's dosage of a powerful anti-psychotic medication has just been increased on her psychiatrist's recommendation, after she started to go downhill again, slipping into constant fantasy and paranoia.

"She is totally reliant on the prescribed drugs. My biggest worry is they will move her in the middle of the night without medication," says Mercedes, who fills Schapelle's prescription and gives a cellmate daily doses to give to her sister.

Schapelle has relied heavily on her sister since the day of her arrest. Mercedes brings her sister's basic needs to the prison almost daily, bringing food and toilet paper and taking a break only on weekends.

"For Schapelle "and all of the prisoners, family and friends are their lifeline. We are responsible for absolutely everything.

Schapelle relies on us totally. Schapelle needs me to take in her medication virtually every day," says Mercedes.

According to an official source, the secrecy surrounding the transfer is to ensure it goes ahead. There is also a letter to transfer , of the , to the same jail.

The plan is for Schapelle and Renae to be plucked from their cells in the middle of the night. Mercedes wouldn't know her sister was gone until her morning visit. "The threats have been continuing for well over four years. Every time she's sick and she goes to hospital, they say they are going to move her," says Mercedes.

Two attempts to transfer Schapelle in recent years have failed. Both were stopped after her family and an Australian consul in Bali fought for her to stay in Bali, close to her family.

But history has proved it can happen. In 2006, a group of seven men and a woman were moved without warning at around 4.30am. The inmates - from Italy, France, Mexico, Brazil, the Philippines, Nigeria and Indonesia - all on drugs charges - had no clue they were going to be moved until they were abruptly woken and taken to the airport in their pyjamas, surrounded by police brandishing machine guns.

One of the inmates admits it was a terrifying experience. "They don't tell us nothing, nothing. Just pick up in the morning and go," says Italian Juri Angione, who confirms he was not allowed to take any possessions with him.

"I say 'Can I take my stuff?'

They say, No cannot, cannot.

I say, 'I get asthma. Maybe I get sick. I always have the puffer.'

No cannot, no," says Angione.

Even the guards, who are notorious for working for the cashed up western inmates - even informing them of police raids - were kept totally in the dark.

"I couldn't, even in my wildest dreams, imagine we were going to fly in a plane that night," says Brazilian inmate Ruggiero.

"Thank God nobody was sentenced to death, because they would, for sure, think it was going to be the execution because it looked like it. They had one machine gun per prisoner and an extra two per bus. So, there were about 12 machine guns,

I think."

After the move of the foreigners, Schapelle feared she was next. A prison source says it's not unusual to move prisoners suddenly. "Moving prisoners in the middle of the night makes it easier. They're tired, and don't resist as much and are not warned beforehand."

And he says it's standard practice to move long-term prisoners out of Kerobokan, which is designed for shorter stints. But many Balinese prisoners are permitted to stay to be near their families. Schapelle's family has used this defence to fight off previous moves.

The jail now holds 717 inmates, more than twice its capacity. Schapelle lives with eight women, who are locked up at 4.30 every afternoon, and released only into the cramped women's section at 7am.

He says the transfer of Renae Lawrence is not about overcrowding so much as a result of her regularly causing trouble. In one incident several weeks ago, she drunkenly punched the j ail's security boss, Pak Maliki, in the face, giving him a bloody lip. She was handcuffed, beaten and left sore and sporting a black eye.

The source says the flights for Schapelle and Renae's transfers are already being booked. In 2006, Schapelle came so close to being transferred that a cell was already set aside for her at Malang Prison.

"There was a cell ready for her here. They told us it was for Schapelle Corby," says Filipino prisoner Nita Ramos, who knew Schapelle in Kerobokan Jail.

Fighting to stay at Kerobokan might seem a little odd, given the hellhole that it remains - despite the latest j ail boss doing his best PR job to deny it is still filthy and rat infested - with drugs, sex and corruption as rife now as ever.

Photos of prisoners smoking crack and shooting up were taken in August last year, after the new boss had begun his reign. Several weeks ago a drink seller in the visiting room had blood dripping from a vein in his arm. Last year assisted guards to drag a body out of an isolation cell. Regular stories appear in local papers about drugs inside the jail.

Sensitive about the jail's image, the boss, Siswanto, recently gathered all inmates to sign a statement saying: prostitutes didn't enter the jail, drug dealing didn't occur, guards didn't take cash for favours, and the cells weren't dirty or smelly.

Given he controls the inmates' daily lives and three of the Bali Nine are still appealing the death sentence, the inmates complied.

And as much as the boss promotes a new computer room, boxing classes and tennis for the men, there is little for the women to do. They're locked up in their block all day with sporadic classes of activities such as yoga.

Schapelle spend her hours making jewellery. Two years ago Schapelle applied for permission to teach beauty, and was asked to talk about this to journalists as a jail PR stunt. But it has never eventuated. The women are also banned from cooking, except on Mondays.

But for all its horrors, being in Bali means there's a continual stream of friends dropping in while on holidays, which helps lift the spirits. It's also a case of the devil you know.

"It was like shock, trauma. It was like, leave everyone we know. We have friends. I know everyone in there. Kerobokan felt like home after three years. Then move," says Italian inmate Angione, who was flown to 's Chipinang prison, and beaten on arrival.

If Schapelle's family cannot stop this transfer, Mercedes will be unable to follow her to Java, and instead will have to do a weekly trip to Malang. It will be tiresome and costly, involving a 55 minute flight, and a two- to three-hour drive.

But Mercedes is still hoping that the Indonesian Government will accept that Schapelle is too ill and emotionally unstable to be moved away from her family.

Hotel Kerobokan: The Shocking Story Of Inside Bali’s Most Notorious Jail, by Kathryn Bonella (Pan Macmillain Australia).