Drug Smuggling in Bali

[Catherine Vincent]

Remember this Australian woman?

http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/14201.html


No Corby transfer for six years
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent
March 07, 2007

SCHAPELLE Corby will serve several more years in cramped Indonesian jails before being eligible for transfer to an Australian prison under a deal being negotiated between Canberra and Jakarta.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock revealed yesterday that discussions over the minimum time prisoners must serve in the country where they were sentenced had been largely resolved. The result is that Corby, who is serving 20 years for smuggling 4.2kg of marijuana into the tourist island of Bali, will not be able to return home to Australia - where she can be closer to her mother and terminally ill father - for up to six years. Mr Ruddock said prisoners would have to serve at least half of their sentence "in the jurisdiction in which (they) were committed, so for somebody who has a long period of sentence, the period for which you may serve before you could participate in the program, could be substantial".

Australia was understood to have been pushing for a one-third minimum period, rather than the half-sentence deal that has now effectively extended Corby's time in the difficult and overcrowded Kerobokan jail, in Bali, where she has spent the past 2 1/2 years. Mr Ruddock said appeals were yet to be resolved, "so I think it's premature to speculate on whether she would be able to participate in any such program if she wished to".

Jail governor Ilham Djaya told The Australian yesterday he had been following the progress of negotiations but warned that "nothing is official yet". He said he had yet to tell his most famous prisoner of the move but would do so at the first opportunity. "I often chat with her," he confided.

.....http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21337925-5006786,00.html

From the article: "Regardless, Corby has indicated she might prefer to serve her sentence in the notoriously lax Indonesian system than in a far stricter Australian prison."

So I gather she did smuggle the drugs that she was convicted of. I've been reading several articles about her situation and lately it's mostly tabloidish like her friends calling her a liar, her family members smoking pot often etc. Out of all those articles, none of them state where she denies smuggling the drugs. In fact, there were others that were convicted along with her.