NSW:Tell all Corby source can't be trusted, Mercedes Corby says

AAP General News (Australia)
12-07-2006
NSW:Tell all Corby source can't be trusted, Mercedes Corby says

SYDNEY, Dec 7 AAP - A former member of Schapelle Corby's legal team who is threatening
to tell "the truth" about her drug smuggling conviction can't be trusted, Corby's sister
Mercedes says.

Vasu Rasiah is angry about an attack on his reputation in Corby's book, My Story, in
which he is described as a money-hungry bully.

Mr Rasiah says he is willing to reveal damaging details about Corby's defence, and
her plea of innocence, unless she backs off.

"If they push us to a corner then we have no option but to reveal all the truth, and
everything that took place, we will. And that will be very detrimental to her," Mr Rasiah
told ABC television last night.

Mercedes Corby, speaking from her Gold Coast home early today, said Mr Rasiah is not
a lawyer and he has threatened the family before.

She said his claims are untrue.

"He can't be trusted ... he is obviously lashing out because he does not like what
is in the book," Mercedes told AAP.

"He can't handle the truth. Schapelle is innocent."

Mr Rasiah was a member of Corby's Indonesian legal team after her arrest in Bali in
2004 with 4.1 kg of cannabis inside a bodyboard bag.

Corby, 29, is serving a 20 year sentence in Bali's Kerobokan Prison.

Mr Rasiah said Mercedes was instrumental in the family refusing an offer from the Australian
Federal Police to DNA test the cannabis, to track its origin, when they learned the results
would be passed on to Indonesian police.

Mr Rasiah told the ABC: "We even got a couple of samples from Bali police for this testing".

But Mercedes rejected that, saying Schapelle signed her consent for the tests but the
Indonesian police refused to release samples.

And she said claims in the ABC report that Schapelle stopped to meet an Adelaide man
on her way to Brisbane airport were "just crap".

"There was mum driving, Schapelle, James, Ally and Katrina in the car, they did not
stop," Mercedes said.

Quoting sources close to the family, the ABC reported it had new information about
Corby's movements before she entered Brisbane airport on October 8, 2004, the day she
left Australia for Bali.

She met an Adelaide man, in the pre-dawn darkness, on her way to Brisbane's international
airport that day, causing her to almost miss her 6am flight, the report said.

AAP pc/cjh

KEYWORD: CORBY DAYLEAD

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