Schapelle Corby could be banned from Indonesia once her parole ends on May 27
SCHAPELLE Corby could be banned from ever returning to Indonesia once her parole ends and she is deported home on May 27.
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EXCLUSIVE
SCHAPELLE Corby could be banned from ever returning to Indonesia once her parole ends and she is deported home on May 27 leaving her relationship with her Indonesian boyfriend Ben Panangian in limbo.
She will almost certainly be banned from returning for up to six months but it could be for a lifetime.
Corby was photographed with Panangian this week at a Kuta beach and he comes and goes regularly from the home where Corby lives in Kuta with her brother Michael.
Corby spent this week, her eighth last in Bali, swimming and reading on the beach as well as jogging.
THE END: Corby counts down the days
Panangian, twice convicted and jailed on drug charges in Bali, would face significant hurdles in being granted a visa to come to Australia to be with his girlfriend long-term.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said there would be no special dispensation made for Corby’s partner and entry to Australia would be via the usual processes applicable to all.
A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department said all non-citizens seeking a visa to come to Australia would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
“As part of the application process, the visa applicant is required to provide details of their criminal history. This information will be taken into consideration when making a decision on the visa application,” the spokeswoman said.
“All non-citizens seeking to enter Australia must meet the character and health requirements, as well as the relevant criteria of the visa for which they have applied.”
The couple met in Bali’s Kerobokan prison church in 2006 when Corby was serving her 15-year sentence and Panangian, from Sumatra, was serving a three and a half year jail term on drugs charges.
Once Panangian was discharged he continued to visit Corby in jail until her release on parole in February 2014.
Then in August 2014 Panangian, under his full name of Bernard P. Simanjuntak, found himself back behind bars, this time arrested and charged with possession, carriage and use of marijuana — three packages weighing 0.64 grams, 0.99 grams and 6.58 grams.
He was sentenced to 10 months in jail after the court treated him as a user, not a dealer.
A paddle board instructor, Panangian has been a constant support for Corby since first meeting her in jail.
The pair has however been publicly coy about their relationship.
When Panangian was arrested in 2014 Corby’s parole officers questioned her about her relationship with him and she told them he was a friend only.
And when the Judges hearing Panangian’s Denpasar District Court trial queried him about Corby he told them they were friends but nothing more.
Corby now has just seven weeks of her 15-year sentence to complete before she returns home to Australia and an uncertain future.
It us understood that she is yet to fully turn her mind to what happens when she gets to Australia and to the future of her relationship with Panangian.
Corby has been on parole, living in Bali, for the past three years. Her full drug trafficking sentence expires on May 27 this year.
On this day she will report to her parole officers for the last time, where she will sign and be given an expiration of parole notice.
But under Indonesian regulations she must then be deported.
Immigration authorities will take her into custody at the parole office and she will then be taken to the airport and kept detained until her flight back to Australia.
All authorities involved in Corby’s discharge and deportation are yet to hold a meeting to iron out the arrangements.
But Bali’s Ngurah Rai Immigration chief, Ari Budijanto, says Corby will be taken directly to the airport from the parole office and kept in custody, possibly in an Immigration detention cell.
Mr Budijanto said Corby was a common criminal who has served her sentence and there is nothing special about her.
The media was making it special, he said.
“This is only a small matter, not a big matter. Corby is a common convict. Nothing special. She is only a crime perpetrator who has already served her sentence and is now going to be deported. That’s all,” Mr Budijanto told News Corporation.
“For me, there is nothing special at all. It’s the media that makes this special,” he said.
Under Indonesia’s narcotics law a foreigner who has committed a drug crime and has served their sentence and been deported can be banned from ever re-entering the country.
Agung Sampurno, the spokesman at Indonesia’s Immigration Directorate General in Jakarta, told News Corporation that a person can be banned from entering Indonesia after a drug sentence upon a recommendation from the Indonesian Police or the National Narcotic Agency or BNN.
He said once all Government agencies had been notified that Corby was being deported the police or BNN could make their ban recommendation.
Arrested at Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport on October 8, 2004 with 4.2kg of marijuana in her boogie board bag, Corby was sentenced originally to 20 years in jail for drug trafficking.
The sentence was eventually cut by five years, to 15 years, after Corby was successful in a clemency bid to former Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
By the time she is deported home on May 27, she will have served 12 years and eight months of her 15-year term, in jail and on parole.
Originally published as Schapelle Corby could be banned from Indonesia once her parole ends on May 27
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