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Bali court sets new hearings in Corby appeal

Posted on: Thursday, 7 July 2005, 04:16 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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