Pubdate: Sat, 23 Apr 2005
Source: New Zealand Herald ( New Zealand )
Copyright: 2005 New Zealand Herald
Contact:  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/300
Author: Rob Taylor

SANDWICHES AND MONOPOLY FOR BOY FACING DEATH

It is an ordeal no parent wants to face.  Pushing past a crush of cameras, 
the parents of some of the Bali nine yesterday visited Denpasar police 
headquarters where a grim cell block has been their children's home since a 
heroin bust last Sunday.

Christine and Lee Rush, from Brisbane, were stony-faced, saying nothing 
when they arrived to see their 19-year-old son, Scott.

Scott Rush is one of nine Australians detained on suspicion of trying to 
traffic drugs.  Police said they seized a total of 8.65kg of heroin when 
they nabbed five people at the Denpasar airport and another four in a Kuta 
hotel.

Rush's parents carried bags of sandwiches, bananas, an Indonesian-English 
dictionary - to help him communicate with guards - and the Monopoly board 
game.

Hurrying past news crews, they were jostled by a dozen cameramen as they 
went down a walkway at the back of the police compound.

Police made the pair sign a visitors' book on an outside table surrounded 
byphotographers, before they were led into a visiting room.

Scott Rush, wearing red board shorts and a T-shirt marking him as prisoner 
number 20, was led out shortly afterwards.

He kissed his parents through the bars of an adjoining room as more than a 
dozen microphones were pushed through a rooftop air vent.

Journalists hung from bars outside the window.  A wooden bench collapsed 
under the weight of the media pack.

Later, the parents of Sydney man Si Yi Chen, 20, arrived with rolls of 
toilet paper and a box of bottled water.  When the couple reached the same 
barred room used by Rush's parents earlier, they were told visiting hours 
were over, requiring them to seek special permission to visit their son.

Police spokesman Colonel A.S.  Reniban said the nine suspects were being 
kept in four cells.

The only female, Renae Lawrence, 27, from near Newcastle, had been placed 
in a women's cell, while the others had been separated according to whether 
they were detained in Bali airport or at the Kuta hotel.

The accused godfather of the operation, Andrew Chan, 21, from Sydney, had 
been moved to a special isolation cell after allegedly making death threats 
against the others if they co-operated with police.

The four detained inside the Bali airport with Rush and Lawrence were 
Brisbane man Michael William Czugaj, 19, and Martin Eric Stephens, 29, from 
Wollongong.

Chan was pulled off a Sydney-bound plane.  Chen, with Tach Duc Thanh 
Nguyen, 27, from Brisbane, and Sydney men Myuran Sukumaran, 24, and Matthew 
James Norman, 18, were detained at the hotel.  
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