JAKARTA, June 5 — A member of the infamous Bali Nine drug smuggling gang has died of stomach cancer, an Indonesian justice ministry official said Tuesday.

Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, 34, was serving a life sentence for his role in trying to traffic heroin from the resort island of Bali back to Australia in 2005.

The group became known as the Bali Nine and its ringleaders, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, were executed by firing squad in 2015.

Nguyen — who was rarely in the media spotlight — was also sentenced to death before the Indonesian Supreme Court later reduced his term to life imprisonment.

He succumbed to the terminal illness last month but his death in a Jakarta prison was only announced this week.

"Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died of stomach cancer in Jakarta on May 19,” justice ministry spokesman Ade Kusmanto told AFP.

Nguyen and two other Australians were arrested shortly after other members of the trafficking gang were detained at the island’s international airport.

None of the three had drugs on them at the time, but police found 350 grams of heroin in a suitcase in their hotel room.

The execution of Sukumaran and Chan sparked a diplomatic row between Australia and Indonesia.

The remaining six members of the gang are still in prison. — AFP