Court in chaos as judge reads guilty verdict and sentence

TEAM Corby had done all they could. Now all they could do was wait.

Denpasar District Court precinct resembled a fete. Gazebos had been set up by Australian TV stations to use for live crosses, and as their bases. Ladders and tripods filled the courtroom windows.

The chief Judge, Linton Sirait, assured nervous TV producers his verdict would be completed in time for their 6pm bulletins. He was bemused by all the attention and all the activity around the court precinct.

No one had thought it appropriate to stop the TV stations when local contractors started hauling in the gazebos, tables and chairs. Indonesians are like that.

They don’t like to be rude and say no to anyone. It’s part of their culture. Even if they want to say no, they often won’t.

Corby’s verdict was being broadcast live in Australia and the courtroom on verdict day was jam-packed. In the front row sat Corby’s loyal family.

For hours Judge Linton and his two fellow judges read the verdict, recountingg the evidence of each witness,s, discounting the defence. Corby was told to stand up.p. Find the defendant guilty. y. Sentence 20 years.

Translator Eka Sulistiowati ti seemed flummoxed and totallylhe out of her depth as she struggled to tell Corby the badad news. Not two years, but 200 years. The rest of the courtroom trs and media translators seemed to comprehend beforere Corby what her fate was.

She banged her palm againstst her head. In the front row Ros os Corby shouted at the judges,s, “you will never sleep at night,ht, you took the word of a liar”. Thehe judges looked nonplussed.

Screaming, shouting, crying, g, wailing. Denpasar District Court had never seen anything like it.

Corby’s face was a crumpled, anguished mess as she embraced her mother and her family. She appealed to her mother to stop shouting before being carried through a throng of media and onlookers outside the court and into a police car to the jail, sirens wailing.

Australians back home reacted in fury. Ron Bakir and Robin Tampoe were devastated. Bakir was in tears. Lily Lubis was in tears. The legal team vowed the fight was not over.

Two Perth QCs entered the fray. Then attorney-general Philip Ruddock had approached Mark Trowell QC at a legal conference on the Gold Coast and asked him to help out, check out what was going on with the case and report back, acting as a go-between.

The government was paying legal aid money to Corby’s defence and they had been under enormous pressure from the legal te team andd public to do more to help Corby. So Trowell and another barrister, Phillip Laskaris, flew to Bali to meet Corby and her family and the legal team. At the jail, Corby appeared scared.

She felt like she was being manipulated and bullied by her legal team and asked Trowell to protect her.

It was at Wasabi Restaurant that Trowell and Laskaris met the so-called case co-ordinator Vasu Rasiah and Lubis.

Over the food, Rasiah dropped the bombshell. He wanted then prime minister John Howard to speak personally to the judges in the case and he wanted $500,000 from the government for lobbying and promotion – that is, bribing the judges at the appeal.

Trowell was shocked. He asked Rasiah to put the request in writing, which he did.

The letter was handed to Trowell at Bali airport as he was about to fly out.

A second formal letter, written later, had the money request, eliminated. Tr Trowell said at the time that Ra Rasiah had told him, forget the merits of appeal, all you have to do is b bribeib the judges and you will win the appeal.

When the details of Rasiah’s request were made public, Rasiah was furious and went on the offensive and denied ever using the word bribe. He said the money was to be used for a PR campaign, lobbying and paying Indonesian journalists to write favourable articles.

For $500,000, there were certainly going to be some rich Indonesian journalists walking around.

Corby ended up sacking Rasiah, Lubis, Siregar and Sihombing. Bakir and Tampoe also left after a bitter war of words with the family over money.

Controversially, Tampoe would say later that the idea for the baggage handler defence came after he heard comments on radio in Australia about corrupt baggage handlers.

He had invented it, just like that, and the defence team clung to it for dear life.

On May 9, just 20 days before the verdict in Corby’s case was delivered, Operation Mocha went down in Sydney with a series of raids and arrests.

Qantas baggage handlers at Sydney’s international airport were implicated in a drug trafficking syndicate where a briefcase with 9.9kg of cocaine from South America was smuggled through the airport – on October 8, 2004 – the exact same day that Corby and her bags transited through Sydney airport en route to Bali. The baggage handlers were, according to court documents, paid $300,000 to ensure the briefcase was removed before it got to Customs.

Then AFP commissioner Mick Keelty said at the time that the South American operation was very different to the Corby scenario. This was cocaine coming from South America. Corby’s was marijuana going from one state to another and then on to Bali.

Tampoe told a documentary crew: “Baggage handlers didn’t put drugs in the bag. Nothin’ to do with it. But now, now she believes it. They all f---ing believe it. It’s not true. I don’t give a shit. You want to attack me? I gave you the defence, I’ll take it away.”