ZedVlog

TEENAGE heroin mule Rachel Diaz, who spent years incarcerated in a foreign prison for drugs, has revealed how Bali Nine kingpin Andrew Chan threatened her from his Balinese jail cell.

Chan, who was executed by firing squad in 2015, ordered Ms Diaz “to keep my mouth shut” about their drug bosses while incarcerated in Hong Kong’s Tai Lam women’s prison.

Ms Diaz revealed exclusively to news.com.au how she became caught up in one of the three heroin smuggling operations organised concurrently by the Bali Nine drug lords.

She made international headlines in April 2005, when she, along with Sydney McDonald’s worker Chris Ha Vo, 15, were arrested in a seedy hotel in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui district.

She ended up spending six years and eight months behind bars.

The two “partner mules” were preparing to swallow 114 heroin-filled condoms, for which they would be paid $200 each.

Five days later, Indonesian police arrested the Bali Nine, identifying Andrew Chan as “The Godfather” of the operation.

Chan was a key organiser of the Australian end of the smuggling and distribution network, which in just two weeks in April 2005 launched heroin trafficking operations involving Australians.

Ms Diaz, and the Bali Nine, were among 17 young Australians incarcerated in three countries over the interrelated plots of which the Australian Federal Police were aware.

Soon afterwards, Chan smuggled letters with the threats for Ms Diaz out of his Kerobokan cell over to her Hong Kong prison.

She told news.com.au about her hell on earth inside the vast facility in Hong Kong’s mountainous New Territories where the guards beat her with pistols and women inmates took their own lives.

Both the Bali Nine and Miss Diaz’s operations were linked to one of the world’s biggest drug syndicates, Crescent Moon, which smuggles heroin out of Myanmar.

Ms Diaz said she tried to change her mind before she boarded the plane in Sydney, but the syndicate lieutenants in the heroin ring wouldn’t let her withdraw.

“I didn’t want to go, but they threatened me. I didn’t want to [swallow the drugs] but they said I had to,” she said.

Ms Diaz said that like the Bali Nine, the Australian Federal Police let her go into the hands of foreign police and prisons.

“They knew even before I did that it was happening. they listened to our conversation and didn’t stop us,” she said.

“I’m thinking about suing the AFP. I’m still affected, you can see.”

She spent five years in jail in Hong Kong before serving a year and eight months at Long Bay in Sydney.

Ms Diaz spoke as she faced a Sydney court preparing to defend charges over an alleged assault after trying to jump from a moving car during a “black” rage, news.com.au can exclusively reveal.

Police claim the alleged incident occurred in moving traffic on the M2 Motorway at West Pennant Hills late on a Friday afternoon last November.

According to the police statement of facts, Diaz admitted to attempting to jump from her de facto partner Hayden Garner’s Toyota Hilux ute, saying, “I just wanted to fall out”.

She has pleaded not guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and is due to face a hearing at a later date.

Court documents reveal that Ms Diaz suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit disorders, as well as bipolar and borderline personality disorders.

Ms Diaz said the damage stemmed from the heroin operation and her subsequent incarceration in Tai Lam.

Ms Diaz was a vulnerable 17-year-old with depression from sexual abuse as a child when she agreed to become a drug mule.

A trainee hairdresser, she lived with her Filipino-Australian family in East Hills in southwestern Sydney.

Telling her parents that she was spending the night at a friend’s place, she travelled to Sydney airport under the supervision of the heroin syndicate’s locally hired men.

At the time, Ms Diaz’s father Ferdinand worked as a manager for Coca Cola in Sydney.

On April 12, 2005, Mr Diaz, his wife and Rachel’s two younger brothers were stunned to learn she was in Hong Kong under police arrest for heroin trafficking.

Ms Diaz, Chris Ha Vo and their drug minder Hutchinson Tran, 21, were arrested at the low budget Imperial hotel in Hong Kong’s sleazy Tsim Sha Tsui district.

Police surveilling local heroin suppliers the De Quy brothers who delivered the drugs via Tran swooped.

They found Vo and Ms Diaz with $1 million worth of heroin in the 5cm long condoms on the hotel bed.

The teens stood to earn up to $6000 if they swallowed enough condoms, but a fearful Ms Diaz was stalling because she feared the packages might erupt in her stomach on the flight home.

Ms Diaz changed her mind and refused to swallow the drugs moments before narcotics officers burst into the room.

Unbeknown to Ms Diaz and Vo, they had been under surveillance back in Sydney by

Strike Force Marlow attached to the NSW Police South-East Asian Crime Squad.

The Hong Kong operation was running concurrently with the Bali Nine importation, under the eyes of Australian police and their counterparts in Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were already in Bali with their seven Australian mules preparing to strap 8.3kg of heroin to their bodies.

Meanwhile, four people aged 24, 22, 18, and 19, were arrested in Brisbane and charged with conspiring with Chan and Sukumaran to import heroin to Australia.

A fifth, Khanh Thanh Ly, 24, was arrested in Sydney and pleaded guilty.

He said he was only a “run-around” in the gang whose members included Sukumaran, and was not paid but did it for the “glamour”.

[Ly is now back in jail after pleading guilty last November to murdering his girlfriend, Miming Listiyani.]

After his only daughter’s arrest, Ferdinand Diaz flew to Hong Kong and stood by Rachel as she appeared in the Kowloon City Court.

Mr Diaz tried to get her released on bail, but a higher Hong Kong court refused.

In April 2006, the court jailed Vo for nine years, Ms Diaz for 10 years and eight months, and Tran for 13 years and four months.

Afterwards Ferdinand Diaz campaigned for Rachel’s release saying she “could not survive” in Tai Lam prison.

Ms Diaz had made one friend in Tai Lam, another woman inmate who could speak English.

“I called her ‘Mum’,” Rachel told news.com.au.

But the woman could not endure Tai Lam and committed suicide, sending Ms Diaz further into anxiety and depression.

While in Tai Lam, she was hospitalised with panic attacks.

Meanwhile in Bali, Denpasar District Court had sentenced Chan and Sukumaran to execution by firing squad.

The other seven members of the Bali Nine received sentences varying from 20 years to life in prison, and death by execution.

Police have independently confirmed to news.com.au that Chan wrote from Kerobokan prison to Ms Diaz in Tai Lam telling her to shut up about the larger drug plot.

The drug syndicate closely linked to Chan and Sukumaran and operated at a local level by Korean-Australian Sung Won Kim and his cohort Bao “Tony” Zhang had recruited Ms Diaz and Vo.

They were arrested at Sydney airport with three packets of laxatives as they waited for Vo and Ms Diaz to return, unaware of the Hong Kong arrests.

Ms Diaz later testified via videolink from Hong Kong against Zhang and Kim, who were convicted of conspiring to import a prohibited drug and imprisoned.

But the Diaz family spent tens of thousands of dollars of their life savings travelling and hiring lawyers in Hong Kong in vain to free her.

In May 2008, Ferdinand Diaz appealed to the NSW Government to pay the $10,000 to transfer Ms Diaz from Tai Lam to Long Bay prison to serve out he sentence.

Mr Diaz said that Rachel was an emotional wreck, medicated and frequently in tears.

Ms Diaz told news.com.au she spent five years behind bars in Hong Kong before being transferred to the Special Purpose Centre within Long Bay correctional facility.

She served a total of six years and eight months before finally being released from prison to her family in Sydney.

In early 2015, Indonesia rejected all avenues of appeal by Chan and Sukumaran against their death sentences

Troops transferred the men from Bali to Nusakambangan prison island and on April 29, 2015, a firing squad executed the two Australians along with six other drug offenders.

Ms Diaz has been in a de facto relationship with Hayden Garner for 18 months and the couple live together in western Sydney.

Mr Garner was driving Ms Diaz to a job interview when the alleged incident in his ute occurred on the M2 last November.

Police allege the pair had an argument, and that Mr Garner then refused to take Ms Diaz to the interview.

The argument escalated, and Ms Diaz then allegedly opened the passenger door to fall from the vehicle.

When Mr Garner allegedly attempted to stop her from falling, police say Ms Diaz kicked him in the jaw and when he took the Pennant Hills off ramp she allegedly began to scream “help” at other vehicles.

Police facts say the alleged assault by Ms Diaz on Mr Garner caused him to swerve all over the road, as she allegedly “punched him numerous times with a closed fist”.

Police called him to pull over the vehicle and allegedly observed “multiple scratches on [Garner’s] torso and three gouges on the left side of his back”.

Court documents allege that Ms Diaz “admitted to ‘seeing black’ and that in this rage she was unable to fully recall her actions”.

“[Diaz] agreed her behaviour was not acceptable but maintained that when in this angered state she didn’t intend to inflict injury but was unable to control herself.”

The hair stylist had allegedly told police that the rage was a result of not taking medication for one of her mental health conditions, and that drinking affected her adversely.

Police facts also say that Mr Garner held “fears” she “might assault him further when not taking medication”.

Police also held fears there “will be further assaults if no action is taken to protect the victim”.

An Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) issued at Burwood Court ordered that Ms Diaz not assault, threaten, stalk, harass or intimidate Mr Garner, not recklessly destroy or damage any property.

Ms Diaz was also ordered to “not do anything that make [Mr Garner] feel frightened or feel that you may harm him or his belongings including jointly owned property or pets”.

Ms Diaz told the court that Mr Garner would also be appearing as her witness as she defends her case.

candace.sutton@news.com.au

Call Lifeline on 131144 for crisis support.

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