Schapelle Corby to be locked up for one last time
SCHAPELLE Corby is to be locked up in a jail cell one last time and told she can never return to Indonesia before her sentence is finalised.
National
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EXCLUSIVE
SCHAPELLE Corby is destined to be locked up in a jail cell one last time before she leaves Indonesia.
Plans are now being finalised for the expiration of the 39-year-old’s drug trafficking sentence on May 27 and immigration chiefs have revealed she will be held in a detention cell before her flight to Australia.
And in a further blow to Corby she will almost certainly be banned forever from returning to Indonesia, meaning she will be leaving behind her boyfriend Ben Panangian, whom she first met in 2006.
MERCEDES CORBY REUNITES WITH SCHAPELLE IN BALI
Nguarah Rai Immigration chief, Ari Budijanto, has told News Corp Australia that Corby will be detained in a holding cell at one of two immigration offices before her flight home.
“I guarantee I will detain her waiting for her flight,” Mr Budijanto said.
He says that despite Corby’s celebrity in Australia she will be afforded no special treatment and will be dealt with in the same way as any other prisoner who is deported from Bali at the end of a jail sentence.
It will be the first time Corby has been behind bars since she walked out the doors of Kerobokan prison in February 2014 after being granted parole. Since then she has lived in a Kuta home, reporting monthly to the Parole officials, and is often seen swimming and running at the beach.
“Who is she? She is a drug trafficker. For me she is an ordinary woman, she is a criminal. Why do you people make her very famous?” an exasperated Mr Budijanto said of the gathering hype around Corby’s release.
“She will never stay in the hotel, she will never stay in the house. We have two immigration offices here (with holding cells) and one detention centre so we can put her anywhere,” he said. “I have no obligation to tell anybody what I am going to do with a criminal.”
The immigration cells where Corby is likely to held at are three by four metres and, according to Mr Budijanto, have no furniture, just a thin mattress on the floor.
“It’s not a hotel,” he says in reference to what it will be like for Corby.
Mr Budijanto said the holding cells had been stripped of furnishings since a Chinese prisoner recently tried to commit suicide after smashing a plastic chair and using the sharp plastic in an attempt to slit his wrists. He survived but the chair was taken out.
Depending on the arrangements of her homeward flight Corby will be held at either the Jimbaran headquarters of the immigration office or at an immigration office inside the international airport.
A Perth man who was recently deported to Australia after completing a drug sentence was held at the Jimbaran holding cells pending his flight.
Mr Budijanto insists Corby is no different to any other criminal who is deported after a jail term.
And he revealed that he will recommend to his Jakarta superiors that Corby be banned for life from ever returning to Indonesia. Drug traffickers were not welcome in Indonesia, he said.
“I will make a recommendation to my Director-General to put her on the blacklist for life. The Director-General, I believe, has the same opinion,” Mr Budijanto said. He will write to Jakarta about it next week.
“I don’t want my children, my family, my brother, my neighbour becoming a narcotics victim,” he said in response to why he intended to ban Corby from Bali for life.
“This is a lesson for everybody who tries to bring narcotics to Indonesia.”
Mr Budijanto says in previous jobs he has also black-listed foreigners from his country.
And the chief of Bali’s Law and Human Rights Ministry, Ida Bagus Ketut Adnyana, told News Corp Australia that Corby had fulfilled all the obligations of her parole so far and would be released on May 27.
But he said there would be no star treatment for Corby.
“Until now, I haven’t done any special steps, because for me, its only a common process, the same like I treat other parole clients, other convicted people,” Mr Adnyana said.
He said he had read Corby’s parole file and he was satisfied she had complied with all her obligations.
“There is no record that she has caused any trouble. If there is a violation, the parole should have been revoked. We are very careful. She is good,” Mr Adnyana said.
“Its not a scenario. That’s real, that’s the fact that she is good on parole.”
He said he was yet to finalise the timings of Corby’s release as there was not yet any notification about her flight to Australia or other details.
Muhammad Natsir, the Immigration chief at the Ministry, said that the last time he saw Corby she was happy about going home and had wanted to know when she could return to Indonesia.
It is understood that Corby is apprehensive about leaving Bali. It is the only home she has known since her arrest in 2004 and she is now in a comfortable relationship with Panangian.
She will be heartbroken to leave him behind, especially as his two drug convictions may be hurdles to him getting a visa to visit Australia.