An angry-looking Indonesian justice minister has indicated he may revoke Schapelle Corby’s parole after watching the Seven Network’s documentary about her release.
Minister Amir Syamsuddin did not even wait for a question from a small group of journalists at his office before saying: “I am waiting for a complete report from the Bali Corrections Board, and in the meantime I’d like to announce that there’s a possibility I will revoke Corby’s parole.”
The Indonesian government explicitly warned the Corby family that Schapelle should not do a post-release interview, but the story on Channel Seven’s Sunday Night programme, which was simply called Schapelle, went ahead anyway using candid footage of Corby and an interview with her sister, Mercedes.
Politicians from president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s parliamentary coalition immediately started to pressure the government to act against her, saying the Corby family had tried to “sneak around the law”.
There is no indication of when Amir might make his decision but it is likely to be within days.
Until now, the minister has been one of Corby’s strongest supporters, saying her case was a legal issue, not a political one, and that she deserved parole because of good behaviour. But he is clearly infuriated by the turn of events and the criticism he is now receiving from the Indonesian parliament in an election year over alleged “special treatment” of the Australian drug smuggler.
Particularly controversial has been Mercedes’ line in the Seven interview that the marijuana in Schapelle’s boogie-board bag in 2004 “could have been from Indonesia” – suggesting she had been set up.
Nasir Jamil a member of Komisi III, parliament’s justice and human rights committee, said the programme had created the impression that “Indonesian law is for sale, that you can buy it”.
Any move to return Schapelle to Kerobokan after less than a month outside would be devastating to a woman who is suffering from mental trauma, according to all who have met her since her release.
Early on Monday (local time), Corby and her family spent nearly two hours explaining their Australian TV appearance to officials at the Bali Justice Office in the hope of resisting the push to revoke her parole.
Sunar Agus, the head of the corrections division at the justice office, who conducted the Monday meeting and then reported his findings to Jakarta, also confirmed to Fairfax Media that the family had left the luxury villa that interviewer Mike Willesee described as a “gilded cage” and moved to another, undisclosed location.
Sunar said Mercedes and her husband Wayan Widyartha had explained what was said in the Seven Network interview, and what they hoped to achieve by it, while Schapelle herself had remained “uncommunicative”.
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Sunar said Mercedes and Wayan had informed him that the program covered the death of Corby’s father Mick and the care Mercedes had given her in prison, as well as their move out of the Sentosa villas.
But the programme covered significantly more ground than that, including more protestations of Corby’s innocence, and the suggestion that she might have been set up.
Sunar said it was a matter for judgment by others if the family had lied to officials about the content of the programme.
He said the family had argued again that Corby should be allowed to do the interview so that other, non-favoured journalists, would stop “hounding her for an interview”.
“But judging from my meeting with her, she would
