All nine drug accused face firing squad

CANBERRA - Tactics used by police to track and arrest nine alleged Australian drug smugglers in Bali will now put all of them before a firing squad if they are found guilty.

Bali drug squad head Bambang Sugiarto said yesterday that the whole group - not just the four alleged "mules" arrested with 8.3kg of heroin strapped to their bodies at Denpasar airport - would be charged under article 82 of Indonesia's drug laws.

"Article 82 covers exporters, coordinators and organisers, so they are all facing the death penalty," Sugiarto said.

The decision to charge the group under this section, rather than a more lenient provision allowing for a maximum 10-year jail sentence, follows a growing conviction that the bid to smuggle the heroin to Australia was only part of a much larger operation involving a network of suppliers, smugglers and distributors reaching down from Southeast Asia.

The Australian Federal Police have already come under heavy fire at home for helping to have the nine arrested in Indonesia, where they risk the death penalty, instead of waiting to seize them as they left their flight in Sydney.

Sugiarto told the Australian yesterday his officers had deliberately waited until the "mules" and a fifth group member entered the airport to ensure they could be charged with exporting heroin under article 82. "We knew they had a plan to export. If we caught them outside the airport they could have denied it."

Sugiarto has also disclosed that investigations had shown that members of the group had previously met and travelled to Bali and that three - alleged ringleader Myuran Sukumaran, 24, and alleged "mules" Renae Lawrence, 27, and Matthew Norman, 18 - had multiple passports.

The hunt for the major players behind their alleged smuggling operation has now moved across Indonesia and into Australia, where a Sydney home has been raided by federal police investigating the case.

And as more details emerge of the surveillance, intelligence-swapping and planning that went into last week's dramatic arrests, the stress is taking a toll of the alleged smugglers.

Most have been treated for depression and minor ailments as interrogation continues in an investigation that could see some executed by firing squad.

Lawrence is on a suicide watch. Police said she had tried to slash her wrists with a ring top from a soft drink can.

The group has also been split to protect its weaker members. Sukumaran, the man alleged by Indonesian police to be the ringleader and the enforcer who allegedly threatened the lives of the families of reluctant "mules" who tried to back out at the last moment, is now being held separately.

Police raided his home in Sydney on Tuesday and took away several undisclosed items. Sukumaran was identified as the most important member of the group by Sugiarto in an interview with the Australian.

Lawyer Anggia Browne, representing alleged "mules" Martin Stephens, 29, and Lawrence, also identified Sukumaran as the man who had supplied the heroin and who had made death threats to force them to strap it to their bodies with masking tape.

Forensic examination of tape canisters seized at the hotel where Sukumaran and alleged accomplice Andrew Chan, 21, were arrested is now under way in a bid to identify the key players. Chan was initially believed to be the ringleader.

But Agus Saputra, the lawyer acting for Sukumaran, Chan and Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen, 27, Si Yen Chen, 20, and Norman denied his clients were drug kingpins.

Australian experts are now trying to find the passwords needed to gain access to mobile phones given to the "mules" to use to ring a contact identified as "Pinocchio" on their arrival in Australia.