This has been a very high-profile story “down under” in Australia. This young woman, Schapelle Corby, appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. While traveling through an Indonesian airport on her way to surf in Bali, she was nabbed with 4.1kg of marijuana in her body-board bag. Corby has no prior record, has never been known to have been involved with marijuana or other drugs, and insists there was nothing in her body-board bag when she left Australia. She hardly fits the profile of a high-stakes marijuana smuggler, and her defense theorizes that she was the victim of a ring of airport baggage handlers who surreptitiously slip their packages into baggage in Australia, then it is retrieved by airport baggage handlers in Indonesia, who apparently missed Corby’s delivery. Indonesia is renowned for its incredibly harsh drug laws and it looks like she’ll be spending the rest of her young adult years in prison:

Schapelle Corby’s clemency plea last hope | Herald Sun
INDONESIA’S Supreme Court has rejected Schapelle Corby’s final appeal against her 20-year sentence for drug trafficking.It was her last legal avenue to have her sentence overturned.

The only other avenue is a plea for clemency to Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which requires an admission of guilt.

However, Mr Yudhoyono has previously said he opposes granting pardons for drugs crimes.

Corby’s lawyers also argued the sentence was too harsh compared with punishments handed down for similar offences elsewhere in Indonesia.

Tags: Australia, Indonesia, Schapelle Corby

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 7:28 am and is filed under 4:20 NewsHour, Law Enforcement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a trackback from your own site.