Bali court sets new hearings in Corby appeal

BALI, Indonesia (Reuters) – An Indonesian court will hear
new witnesses on July 20 in the case of an Australian beauty
therapist appealing a 20 year jail sentence for smuggling
marijuana to the resort island of Bali, a judge said on
Thursday.

The Bali High Court will hold the additional hearings in
the appeal by 27-year-old Schapelle Corby, convicted on May 27
of importing 4.1 kg (9 lb) of marijuana in a case that gripped
and infuriated much of the Australian public.

“We have decided to hold a trial to examine additional
witnesses … on July 20,” Linton Sirait, the chief judge who
sent Corby to jail, told reporters.

Corby’s lawyers want to present new witnesses to the court,
including some whom the lawyers say have been convicted of drug
crimes in Australia, arguing they could help her case.

The court declined a further request by Corby’s defense
team to delay the hearings until Aug. 5 to allow for expected
difficulties in getting the witnesses on time.

“I’m having problems to bring the additional witnesses
because … (their) status is prisoners. Therefore it needs
bureaucracy between the Indonesian and the Australian
governments to bring them,” one of Corby’s lawyers, Erwin
Siregar, told reporters.

Australia has offered to make what help it can available to
Corby’s defense team, including helping to fly potential
witnesses to Bali.

Corby wrote an emotional letter to Prime Minister John
Howard this week asking for his help. Howard said he hoped to
have a reply finished in the next couple of days.

“We will do anything we can to help her but we cannot
generate witnesses that might not exist and you cannot force
people … to do or say things that they don’t wish to do or
say,” Howard told reporters in Sydney.

“We have to respect the justice system of another country.”

The same team of Bali judges from the previous trial will
preside at the hearings, and Corby is required to be present.

The prosecution sees the case as open-and-shut drug
trafficking because Corby told Bali customs the bag was hers.

Legal experts say that to overturn the conviction, Corby’s
defense must provide hard evidence Australian airport luggage
handlers put the cannabis into the bag without her knowledge.

Australian media have reported that judge Sirait has never
acquitted a defendant in some 500 drugs trials. Corby, of the
Australian state of Queensland, could have faced a death
sentence.

(Additional reporting by Paul Tait in Sydney)