Matthew Norman was just 18-years-old when he agreed to be a drug mule in the Bali 9 syndicate.
He intended to use the $15,000 to buy a car, but was instead given a life sentence – and in Indonesia, life actually means life.
“I didn’t even think about the consequences whatsoever,” he told the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program.
“When you look back on it now, it’s absolutely peanuts, it’s nothing.”
Now 30-years-old, Norman says he regrets throwing his life away, as well as the toll it’s taken on his family.
“I committed the crime. They kind of have to deal with the consequences as well,” he said.
“That’s not fair. It’s not fair on them.”
Norman’s 12 years behind bars have seen him lose his identity.
“Now no one knows me as me,” he tells journalist Samantha Hawley.
“I’m not Matthew Norman. I’m just Matthew Bali Nine.”
Considered a model prisoner, the prison governor is seeking clemency from President Joko Widodo to have Norman’s life sentence reduced to 20 years – but the two face never being released.
“In Indonesia, life means life,” Hawley told news.com.au.
“They remain hopeful the Indonesian President will grant them clemency.”
“They” refers to other Bali 9 “lifer” Si Yi Chen who also spoke to Foreign Correspondent in his prison cell.
When Chen was a 20-year-old “high-ego-teenager”, he smuggled drugs alongside Norman, hoping to use the $15,000 to pay for aviation school so he could become a pilot.
Chen’s 20 year sentence was increased to the death penalty, before being reduced to a life sentence.
Now 32-years-old, he described the changing sentences as a “complicated feeling” as he faced either being executed or spending the rest of his life in a foreign prison.
“It was actually a relief for me, knowing that I’m not going to rot in jail, but my parents told me not to give up,” he explained.
“So when I got my sentenced reduced back to life sentence I said OK, look at it as God gave us a second chance to live.”
When asked by journalist Samantha Hawley if he had anything else to say, he emotionally begged: “Get me home”.
Ringleaders of the infamous Bali 9, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, were executed by firing squad in April 2015.
