Bali Nine drug smuggler Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen dies in prison

A MEMBER of Australia’s infamous Bali Nine has died after spending 13 years in an Indonesian prison.

Convicted drug trafficker Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, 34, was serving a life sentence for his role in a plot to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin into Australia in 2005.

While other Bali Nine members have courted the spotlight since being convicted, Nguyen remained relatively quiet over the years.

Nguyen is the third of the nine members to reportedly lose his life after Bali Nine ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were executed by firing squad in 2015.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed to news.com.au it was “providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian man who died of a terminal illness in Indonesia”.

The department confirmed the family is the Nguyen family.

Nguyen was transferred to jail in Malang in East Java with Bali Nine mule Martin Stephens, with whom he shared a cell.

The man dubbed “the forgotten Bali nine prisoner” found love in prison. In 2015 he was engaged to Lyudmyla Karpova, a 26-year-old ambulance volunteer with the Red Cross in Italy.

She has refused to make any comment on his death, first reported by the Daily Mail.

In his first ever interview in 2015, Nguyen revealed that at the time of the executions of Chan and Sukumaran there were “fates worse than death”.

“Am I guilty? Yes. Am I sorry? More than anyone will ever know,” he said.

“I live with that regret every single morning when I wake and every night in my noisy bare jail cell as I try to sleep.

“That’s the memory that has stayed in my mind. That time when my mother, aunty and sister came that first time to visit me in prison.

“My mother trying to just touch my face between the bars. The pain in her eyes and face. (It) was the most heartbreaking experience ever.

“I’ve been slowly trying to mend things over the past decade. It’s like they are still disappointed in me. I’m sure they are, there is still a long way to go to truly fix it.”

He also expressed guilt about enlisting the services of friend Scott Rush as a mule.

“It has been terrible watching him destroy himself,” he said.

“I tell you now, there isn’t any code of honour among drug dealers. In the end it will destroy you and everyone around you.”

In September 2006, on appeal, the Indonesian Supreme Court increased his sentence to the death penalty — before being reduced again to life almost two years later.