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Australia pursues legal and political end to Corby case

Indonesia's justice minister will meet the legal team of an Australian woman sentenced to 20 years' prison for smuggling marijuana, her Australian lawyer said yesterday, as the team considered pursuing political as well as legal ways to free her.

The Australian public and media have widely condemned the Bali District Court's conviction and sentencing on Friday of 27-year-old Schapelle Corby for trying to smuggle 4.1kg of marijuana through Bali's airport in October.

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Australians accept her story that someone else had placed the drugs in her surfboard bag.

Her lawyers have suggested it may have been corrupt airport baggage handlers who had intended to transport the marijuana within Australia, but failed to retrieve it before Corby's luggage was transferred to an international flight in Sydney.

Lawyer Robin Tampoe, of Corby's hometown of Gold Coast in Queensland state, said Indonesian Justice Minister Hamid Awaluddin had agreed to speak to Corby's Indonesian legal team to discuss her options. He did not say when the meeting would take place.

"We'll pursue every conceivable avenue that we can," Tampoe told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio when asked if he wanted to pursue political negotiations as well as a judicial appeal.

"Anything we can possibly do to get Schapelle Corby home, we'll leave no stone unturned," he said. "Everything is an option."

Prime Minister John Howard, who advocates a zero-tolerance policy toward drugs, on Friday took the unusual step of expressing sympathy for Corby.

The government has offered financial backing for her appeal, and two senior Australian lawyers have agreed to work on the case for free. Tampoe accepted the offer.

The case against Corby, a student beautician, has generated Australian hostility toward Indonesia and created a diplomatic balancing act for Howard's government, which has a fragile relationship with Jakarta.

Howard wants to be seen as doing all he can for Corby, but he also needs to show respect for neighboring Indonesia's legal system.

Australia's Daily Telegraph newspaper contrasted Corby's sentence with that of militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for his part in the bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in 2002.

"The justice system that gave a terrorist leader two years' jail for his part in the Bali bombing yesterday sentenced Schapelle Corby to 20 years for smuggling cannabis," the newspaper said yesterday in a front-page story headlined "Nation's Fury."

The front-page headline of another paper, the Australian, read, "Judges show Corby no mercy," despite her sentence being less than the life term prosecutors had requested -- and a potential death penalty.

Indonesian prosecutors plan to appeal the sentence in the Bali High Court on the grounds it is too lenient, state news agency Antara reported Saturday, quoting Attorney Generals Office spokesman RJ Soehandoyo.
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