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| Typical cell at Kerobokan Prison, Bali. |
Bali/Jakarta. - Convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby will soon walk free from a notorious Bali prison after Indonesia’s justice minister confirmed on Friday that she had been granted parole, bringing to an end her nine years spent as a guest of the Indonesian justice system.
“Corby is one of the 1,291 [inmates whose parole has been processed],” Amir Syamsuddin said at a delayed press conference on Friday afternoon. “I do not want to talk specifically about Schapelle. What I want to stress here is that this conditional parole is not a policy, not generosity of the government, nor the ministry, it is a law that is regulated and enacted by the government.
“Because of that, we, myself as the minister, we uphold the law and our nation has our own dignity. We uphold the law without looking at who the person involved is. One more time, do not force me to repeat, we have dignity, there is law in the country. We do not seek popularity and we are not afraid of critics. Enough,” the minister said in Jakarta.
Corby was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2005 after customs agents at Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport found 4.1 kilograms of marijuana in her bodyboard bag. Her consistent denial that she knew nothing of the drugs failed to persuade the judges presiding over her initial trial and subsequent appeal.
In Bali, a scrum of Australian journalists crowded outside Kerobokan prison on Friday as Schapelle’s sister, Mercedes, arrived to meet with officials. A condition of the 36-year-old’s parole is that she will have to live in Bali with her sister until 2017.
Source: Agence France-Presse, Feb. 7, 2014
