Schapelle Corby; guilty or innocent?

Most of us are familiar with the Schapelle Corby case. The Australian woman is behind bars in Indonesia for a drug crime she claims she is innocent of. But a new book has cast huge doubts on Corby's protestations of innocence; Stuff reports:

Schapelle Corby's insistence she knew nothing about the bag of marijuana found in her boogie board bag has been dealt another major blow with a new book detailing where the marijuana came from, how it got into her bag and her father's 30-year history of drug dealing.

Sins of the Father by Sun-Herald journalist Eamonn Duff adds a myriad of details to the circumstances surrounding Australia's most polarising criminal cases since Lindy Chamberlain's conviction.

Launching the book this morning, Allen and Unwin publisher Richard Walsh said: "Indonesians have said from the beginning she's a guilty person, we are saying to a domestic audience we agree."

The book fills in many of the gaps in other accounts to argue that Mick Corby was running drugs across Australia and to Bali and had been involved in selling drugs for most of his life.

Duff says that it was Mick Corby who packed the drugs into his daughter's boogie board bag and that the operation was rushed because the courier delivering the drugs was late arriving from South Australia.

The book says Brenda Joyce Eastwood, a mother of four in her 50s, drove hydroponically grown marijuana from South Australia to the Gold Coast two days before Corby left for Bali.

She was delivering it for Malcolm McCauley, the convicted South Australian drug dealer who visitied Corby in jail 18 days after she was arrested.

The Stuff story goes on to detail more of the "evidence" which Duff has used to build his case against Corby, which we reckon is pretty compelling. But it's the political macinations behind the scenes that we found especially fascinating; read on:

With Australia so polarised, then foreign minister Alexander Downer was cautious about commenting on the Corby case but has now been interviewed by Duff.

"I asked [the Australian Federal Police] once what they thought and their view was she was guilty,” Downer said.

Further down the track, in the lead-up to her verdict, a meeting was called between several government ministers.

A senior political staffer, present that day, recalls: "Police Commissioner Mick Keelty told us there were intelligence reports which had been forwarded to the AFP from Queensland Police, and Keelty basically urged extreme caution in terms of making public statements in support of Schapelle Corby. I remember that very clearly. We were told that, if this came out, it would be more than embarrassing for Schapelle Corby."

We've always had strong suspicions that Schapelle Corby was guilty as charged. After all, 4.2kg of cannabis shaped like a boogie board doesn't just mystically appear in someone's boogie board bag.

Sins of the Father sounds like an interesting read. It may just appear on our iPad in the near future, although that will be a conscious decision on our part, and we won't plead innocence!