Push for Royal Commission into people-smuggler cash scandalIndonesian MP calls for Australia to abandon push-back policyMoney police say was paid to send asylum seekers on a 'suicide mission'How events unfolded
Rote Island: The captain allegedly paid by Australia to return asylum seekers to Indonesia said he begged an Australian official for help because he would not receive money from a people smuggling agent unless the boat reached New Zealand.
"I told the officer, we haven't been paid, all those days sailing, all our efforts for nothing. Can you help us?" Yohanis Humiang told Fairfax Media in an interview in his cell. 
"The officer said: 'Yes we can help you'. He also said: 'Never ever do this work ever again'."
Mr Yohanis also revealed Australian authorities had not believed the boat of 65 asylum seekers was headed for New Zealand when they intercepted it on two occasions earlier this year.
In   June Indonesian police officers told Fairfax Media the asylum seeker boat, Andika, was intercepted by the navy warship HMAS Wollongong and an Australian customs boat in international waters on   May 21.
However, they say the payments to the six crew allegedly made by an Australian official, Agus, took place on board the boat several days later near Greenhill Island in the Northern Territory. The asylum seekers and crew were later transferred to two other boats, Jasmine and Kanak, for the return journey.
The Rote Ndao court this week heard six boat crew members were paid more than $US30,000 ($42,000) to return the asylum seekers to Indonesia - a payment prosecutor Alexander Sele described as "the alleged bribery money by the Australian government".
Mr Yohanis said the police had returned the crew's money, preventing it from being presented as evidence during the court trial. "I already sent it to my family back home," he said.
The captain, who is facing a maximum of 15 years' jail on people smuggling charges, said he didn't know the punishment would be this heavy.
"I was told by the boss that I will get three months at the most, then I will get deported. I wasn't planning on leaving my family for this long. I really regret this, we all regret it."
A damning Amnesty International report last month found all the available evidence pointed to Australian officials committing a transnational crime by effectively directing a people smuggling operation in   May this year, paying a boat crew and then instructing them where to land.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton did not deny the payments took place when questioned on the ABC's Insiders on Sunday.
"People can draw their own conclusions. The point that we've made consistently is that we don't comment on operational matters. Suffice to say that our officers operate within the law to stop the boats, stop them we have and we're not going to allow people smugglers to get back into business," he said.
However some public officials - such as those from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service - may have immunity from prosecution under Australian law.
Luhut Panjaitan, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, told Fairfax Media that people who smuggled asylum seekers to Australia should not be "accommodated".
"Well they want the big money, that's why they smuggled people to Australia, then you countered by giving money to the owner of the boat," he said.
"If you say 'incentive', they can also put the word 'you bribed them' in order to do so. So, I think we have to be careful on this one. I think we look for another approach to solve the problem. We can discuss it, we have to discuss it openly, instead of just [saying] 'you have your own policy, we have our own policy'.
The Amnesty International report also called for an investigation into a second case of possible payments to crew intercepted by the Australian Navy and Border forces on   July 25.
It says passengers became suspicious of the contents of two bags they had not seen before which had been given to the captain and crew by Australian officials.
However Indonesian police have said there is no evidence of Australian officials making a payment on the second occasion. Asylum seekers interviewed by Fairfax Media said while one of the bags contained a mobile phone and a walkie-talkie, they simply didn't know what the second bag contained.
"We didn't see inside the other bag, we don't know," said Bangladeshi asylum seeker Mamun Parves. "We asked the captain what is in it many times, he kept saying 'It's nothing, nothing'."
Meanwhile, Kandiha Kayuran, one of the Sri Lankan asylum seekers on the first boat now living at Inaboi, an immigration hostel in Kupang, said New Zealand had ignored their plight.
"The Amnesty report is out but they stay silent," Mr Kayuran said. "New Zealand is not responding to us, we wrote to their minister, the news was covered by Radio New Zealand, but there was no response. No answer, they are not saying anything. Australia and New Zealand are the same."
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