Corby cans cash-for-chat
Australian drug smuggler will not give scheduled TV interview for ‘time being’, say family.
MERCEDES CORBY has agreed that her sister Schapelle will not do a paid TV interview ‘‘for the time being’’, after the Indonesian justice department threatened to put her back in prison if she did.
But the family has refused to move from the luxurious Villa Sentosa Seminyak, where they have been since Schapelle Corby’s release from prison on Monday, saying Corby is too nervous of the media pack waiting out the front.
Three members of the Bali Parole Board visited the Corby compound on Friday afternoon to advise the family not to do a planned interview with the Seven Network’s Mike Willesee because it might ‘‘cause restlessness in the community’’, according to spokeswoman Ketut Sukiati.
Wayan Widyartha, Corby’s brother-in-law and the guarantor of her good behaviour, had told Ketut that, ‘‘they would not do the interview for the time being’’, she said.
The family did not know how long they planned to hold off.
Ketut said Corby was in the room throughout the meeting, but apart from her initial greeting, only nodded occasionally and said, ‘‘Yes’’. Mercedes and Wayan did the talking.
One of Corby’s parole conditions is to speak respectfully to officials.
Ketut said Corby had seemed ‘‘a lot more fit than on other visits’’. She attributed this to the afternoon timing; on the morning visit earlier this week, she had been groggy from her medication, Ketut said.
Indonesian sensitivities have been insulted by Corby’s residence in a luxury villa, but Wayan said the group would not yet leave it to go back to the address listed in her parole documents compound in Kuta.
Wayan reportedly said Corby wanted to go home as quickly as possible, but that the encampment of Australian ( and sometimes Indonesian) journalists, waiting in a hotel cafe outside the compound, were ‘‘ causing all the problems’’.
‘‘She wants to go home immediately but she’s stressed because of all the media attention. She feels like she’s chained,’’ Ketut said. ‘‘She’s out free, even though with conditions, but she can’t go anywhere, and it’s stressing her more.’’
She would leave the Sentosa villas only when the media stopped ‘‘hounding her’’.
‘‘We don’t know until when she will be there. But how can she go home if media keep chasing her? The other people at the home [ Wayan’s home], and the neighbours, it will cause problems if she goes home,’’ Ketut said.
Inside the villa complex is a Seven Network media team led by senior journalist Mike Willesee, who were invited by the Corby family and who are planning to pay for an exclusive interview with the drug smuggler.
A camera crew from that team joined the travelling media outside the complex for an hour or more on Friday to film comings and goings. Ketut said she knew nothing about the team.
Earlier on Friday, Willesee had been clinging defiantly to the idea that he could do his paid interview with Corby.
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