Many more prison birthdays await Corby, whether she comes home to Australia or not. Talk of prisoner-transfer agreements between the Indonesian and Australian governments have not excited the Corby clan. They see jail as jail, whether here or there.

Anggia Lubis Browne, lawyer acting for Corby’s prison buddy and fellow 20-year prisoner, heroin smuggler Renae Lawrence, said Lawrence had told her she would “definitely not” consider transferring to Australia. The cold efficiency of Australian prison life doesn’t hold much appeal when compared to laidback Kerobokan.

The Corby family remains too angry to say what they think of Schapelle making a caged homecoming. The anger is not directed at Indonesia but at Australia, which they believe has not done enough for Schapelle.

It will be Corby’s decision whether she decides to take up the transfer option. As to how it might work, they have heard nothing from the Australian government. No phone call, no briefing.

Perhaps that’s because nothing has been signed. Indonesia has agreed to a prisoner-transfer treaty, in principle, but it will not be formalised until September, when the Indonesian justice minister visits Australia. Until then, none of the 13 Australians held in Indonesian prisons will be coming home.

Meanwhile, Corby waits for her final shot at an appeal. After her arrest on October 8, 2004, in Bali where she was caught with 4.1kg of marijuana, she went through a trial in which she was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years.

As part of her appeal to Bali’s High Court, self-proclaimed superstar Jakarta lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea, weighed in and managed to convince the court to reopen her case in the lower court to hear new Australian witnesses who would claim the drugs were planted. This was granted but the witnesses were never called.

The High Court reduced her sentence to 15 years. This was appealed, both by defence and prosecution. The Indonesian Supreme Court, which sits in Jakarta, preferred the prosecution argument and reinstated the 20-year sentence.

That seemed to be pretty much the end of the road for Corby, although one option remains: a so-called extraordinary appeal, also to the Supreme Court. The first step is to convince the judges to undertake the review. They are rarely granted.

Corby’s Bali barrister, Erwin Siregar, was reluctant to talk about this, the final gambit. Speculation about what Indonesian judges may or may not do in Corby’s case has seriously annoyed them in the past.

Siregar won’t risk it. “To be honest with you, we want to make this without any publicity,” he tells The Bulletin . “It will be before end of year and, of course, we are optimistic. We would not bring the case otherwise.

“Everything will depend on the judges. Usually there are three judges. They will read the case of the lawyers, prosecutors, and document reports from District Court of Denpasar.” It is worth a shot, says Siregar, because judges never increase sentences with extraordinary appeals. “They can only make free, lessen, or keep the same sentence.”

For 22 months, the case of the Gold Coast TAFE beauty student – or drug runner, depending on your point of view – has ruled headlines and hearts. When revelations came last year that Corby’s brother, Clinton “Badger” Rose was doing time in Queensland for drug-related break and enters, and fraud, it seemed not to taint Corby, nor diminish her huge public support.

Then, in January, on the same day the Supreme Court reinstated Corby’s 20-year sentence, it was revealed that James Kisina, Corby’s half-brother, had been arrested and charged over a violent home invasion in which he and two mates allegedly stole cash and marijuana. Many wondered if they’d fallen too quickly for Schapelle’s pleading eyes. James had been at Corby’s side when she was arrested in Denpasar.

In some senses, Corby’s guilt or innocence seems less of an issue now. People have made up their own minds. Australians have such liberal views on marijuana that most would probably say she, if guilty, has had enough.

But she’s not in our country and is not subject to our laws.

Those closest to Corby maintain she is the tragic victim of circumstance. Some have been burned by their involvement in the case; some forced to face a bombardment of publicity they never imagined possible. They tell of hope, despair and anger in a case that has drawn the attention of a neighbouring president and prime minister, along with every Australian and Indonesian who pays any attention to the media.

Rosleigh Rose
Rose, 52, was fuming over an article in last week’s New Idea when we spoke to her. Promising “Shocking pics inside”, there was one not-too-amazing photo of her daughter with short hair. The story, sourced from a released female Dutch inmate, claimed Corby now “looks more like one of the boys”, and said the style was “very butch”.

Reading not too deeply between the lines were hints of the emergent lesbian Corby, resigned to dyke out her jail years.

It was claimed Corby had buried her hair as part of a “strange” and “bizarre” religious ceremony, then dug it up again, probably so it could be auctioned off on eBay.

“She only cut it because it was so hot,” says Rose, exasperated and demanding to know why no one had contacted her to “even try to get the story half-right”.

“She cut her hair back in February. She was saying, ‘I don’t know whether to cut it.’ I said, ‘Just cut the stuff off.’ She did it because it was just too hot – she had 14 girls with her in her cell and it was too hot.

“And she didn’t mutter spells. It’s some Indonesian thing – the Indonesian prisoners buried her hair. They put it ‘back to the earth’. She looks stunning with her haircut. Makes her look 16. And she never dug it up.”

The story also revealed that Corby “once even owned a small dog that died in prison leaving the former beautician heartbroken”.

“Stanley is alive,” says Rose. Her daughter Mercedes has the dog. Stanley wears “a pink bikini and a crocheted hat” and can be seen running round Kuta Beach on any afternoon. “We take him to visit Schapelle all the time.” Stanley was never Corby’s jail dog – although he has had a couple of overnight stays in Kerobokan.

There was a quite slimy line in the story at the end, which seemed to fly in the face of the earlier lesbian thrust. It suggested that Corby had developed a “close” relationship with another prisoner who needed to be shifted away from her. Because of fears she might have fallen pregnant.

More bullshit. But what can Rose do? Struggle on.

“I can’t put the whole thing in words, I just can’t,” she says. “It’s not ending. I write to the government all the time, and to the Indonesian government. They just say, ‘It’s none of my business’. They say, ‘Write to this person’ and just pass the buck.”

Of the prisoner-transfer plan, Rose says it’s “just another thing to put in the media. I can’t believe what the government says. Howard wants us all to think we’re on good terms with the [Indonesian] president, that’s what it’s all about.

“I don’t want this whole thing to change me. I’ve seen people change for money. I just want to be straight down to earth like I always have done. Some people like me for it, and some don’t. My kids love me the way I am.”

Of those kids, James , 19, has been ordered to stand trial for armed robbery, deprivation of liberty and drug possession. “He’s fine,” says Rosleigh. Mele Kisina , 16, the youngest, is “back at school, doing good”. Michael jnr , 30, a slave to the surf, is “all right”, Mercedes, “is Mercedes” and Clinton, 23, or Badger, is out of jail and proving a revelation. “He’s doing really well, took us out to a nice lunch the other day, he paid for everything, he’s working hard and doing us proud. He’s a good loving boy.”

Rose’s former husband Michael is getting no better. “He’s still having tests and stuff. The cancer won’t go away. It’s in his bones. There’s no cure for that.”

Mercedes Corby
Mercedes, 31, talks, but prefers not to, on the record. Living in Bali, with her husband, Wayan, their two small children, and Stanley the undead dog, she is her sister’s main conduit to the outside world. For that reason she prefers to keep it real, informing her sister on the outside world but refusing to act as Schapelle’s spokesperson. She is most worried about being seen to complain about the jail system or Indonesia generally, to which neither she nor Schapelle harbour malice.

Ron Bakir
The Gold Coast-based mobile phone businessman was briefly known in popular legend as Corby’s “white knight”, claiming he’d dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars to helping with Corby’s defence.

But Rosleigh Rose, talking to The Bulletin last year, wondered if he was instead a “black knight” more interested in signing up her daughter to all sorts of exclusive publishing and film deals.

The story saw Bakir and the Corbys parting ways. Asked how the Corby case had affected him, Bakir said: “No, I’m not interested. I’m a straight shooter. All of your articles have not been truthful, in my view.”

Hotman Paris Hutapea
Hotman remains furious at the Australian government for what he claims was unwanted interference in the case. Hotman likes being furious. “The way this was handled from your government was really frustrating,” he says. “Whether Corby is guilty or not, your government has the moral obligation to help. But my feeling is they ruined the case. Ask them why. They talk too much to the public. For example, [when] the case at the High Court, suddenly your foreign minister is talking to the public about the announcement, we don’t even know what is the motive.”

Last August, Alexander Downer spoke of “a rumour that her sentence is to be halved by the Bali High Court but we have no way of confirming that at this stage. We’ll just have to wait until the judges give their decision and I’m not sure when that will be.”

Hotman argues he had been working – in legal ways – on the Bali judges, all of whom he knew from Jakarta. He believed he was close to getting a big sentence reduction when Downer spoke and “make the whole judges upset in Bali. Maybe she could have got 10 years if he’d kept his mouth shut.”

Justice Minister Chris Ellison (see below) he describes as “very unreliable”. Arriving in Singapore, also in August last year, Ellison told reporters of his encounter with Hotman in Jakarta: “After we got over the first argument as to whether he should attend with his sidearm and his armed bodyguards, and we said that that wasn’t on, the meeting then proceeded.”

“He lied about that,” says Hotman. “When I met him in Four Seasons Hotel in Jakarta, after the meeting, he said I bought my two guns to the meeting. That’s bullshit. Before the meeting I put my gun in my Jeep. Because I got the feeling he may try to make me embarrassed. He had many secret police, they search me.

“After the meeting he talk publicly in Singapore that I tried to bring guns to the meeting room. He also said I bring my security guard, bullshit. I took my Chinese lady secretary.”

Hotman claims the Australians stifled his efforts to bring forth new witnesses; and says when Perth Queen’s Counsel, Mark Trowell, got involved at the government’s request, Trowell should never have gone public on plans by the Bali legal team (not Hotman) to bribe judges.

“He also ruin the case, he immediately attacking Bali lawyer, why he talk to the public that? I don’t know about the money, but it was embarrassing to Indonesian judges because it looked like a conspiracy.” But Trowell, upon learning of the planned bribe, could hardly do otherwise. Had it later emerged that such a senior lawyer had knowledge of a bribe attempt, it could have ended his career.

Hotman did his Corby work pro bono. “Of course, I’m rich. I may be richer than any Australian lawyer. I believe your lawyers – maximum – earn $1m a year. In Jakarta I can get that from one case. I did it because I just find the case interesting. Also I want to accuse the hypocrisy of some of your people.

“They say my country is bad. But yours is, too.”

Hotman turns up to court for fun. “I’m like a kung-fu picture. I like fighting every-where. There is a murder case in north Jakarta, the victim is from my tribe. I’m Batak, from north Sumatra. The man who maybe commit the murder is a movie star, from the other tribe.

“My tribe is angry at why I defend someone from the other tribe. I just like the legal battle. I do it for free.”

Hotman resigned from the Corby case in January. “I cannot tell the reason why I resigned, because I don’t want to tell publicly. I think you have the feeling why I resigned. I resigned after the brother [James was arrested]. Just draw your own conclusion.”

Is Corby innocent? “I can’t comment now. I’m resigned. There is now the judicial review, the last chance. But the chance is only 5% successful.”

Justice Minister Chris Ellison
It was Attorney-General Philip Ruddock who came to an in-principle agreement with Indonesia’s Justice Minister, Hamid Awaluddin, for a prisoner-transfer agreement when they met in Bali two weeks ago. But Chris Ellison will have carriage from here in.

The two countries have agreed the transfer will apply to all offences (some Asian countries will not transfer convicted drug traffickers). The Indonesians have agreed that Australians will not – as reported – have to serve half their sentence in Indonesia before transferring.

“It will be less than half,” Ellison says. Probably much less.

As to parole eligibility for prisoners returned to Australia, Ellison points out that Indonesia doesn’t have a parole authority but it does have a remissions system. “We would look to imitate as much as possible the sentence imposed in the jurisdiction where that sentence was imposed,” he says. The agreement would allow flexibility so that individuals who applied would be treated on “a case-by-case basis”. Ellison agrees families of Australians held in Indonesia are yet to be briefed on the move, but says it would not be helpful to take them through it until the deal is signed in September.

Hotman’s claims that the Australian government did nothing to assist Corby do not stack up. Correspondence between Ellison’s office and Bali lawyers reveal the government went to extraordinary, and repeated, lengths to offer assistance. The defence was also funded by the government under the Special Circumstances (Overseas) Scheme, despite claims by certain individuals that they wore the costs themselves.

Offers were made, time and again, particularly to provide access to so-called new Australian “witnesses”. They flew prisoner John Ford to Bali (the judges said Ford’s evidence, of overhearing prisoners saying the marijuana was not Corby’s, was “hearsay on hearsay”).

As to others who the defence claimed would prove Corby’s innocence, they could offer nothing substantial.

It was not the federal government’s fault that these blokes were so dodgy that the Indonesian lawyers decided, in the end, not to call them.

“We didn’t question the evidence, that wasn’t our job,” says Ellison. “We wanted to assist in whatever way we could to make sure Schapelle Corby put her defence completely. As to the value of those witnesses and the value of witnesses sought, I won’t comment on that.”

Ellison is a mild man, a true conservative, so any meeting with wildman Hotman was always going to be strained.

“I found it part frustrating to deal with Hotman Paris,” says Ellison. “Trying to render assistance was a frustrating process.”

Q: Is the fact that you were offering help to the Bali lawyers, willing to provide video links from Australia to the Bali court, and for prisoners to travel and give evidence in Bali, can we infer that that came from a belief she was innocent? That you’ve never taken a briefing from Australian Federal Police on any Corby family drug history, or anything that suggests Schapelle Corby’s guilt?

“I can put it this way,” says Ellison. “We approached the Schapelle Corby case on the basis that she was entitled to a presumption of innocence just like anyone else in her situation was entitled to.

“That presumption was the basis of our approach throughout her trial. I’m not going to comment on what AFP might discuss with me.”

Asked his view on Corby, Ellison says: “I’ve never expressed a view on Schapelle Corby’s guilt or innocence. And nor will I.”

Schapelle Corby Case Information