JAKARTA - Schapelle Corby's lawyers are struggling to find new evidence ahead of next week's reopening of her drugs trial and in desperation are asking Australian journalists to be witnesses.
Celebrity counsel Hotman Paris Hutapea today said that after being rebuffed by the federal government on an immunity deal forpossible crime world witnesses, he wants reporters to testify about alleged drug gangs operating in Australian airports.
"What can I do?" he told AAP.
"I am only a lawyer, not an investigator, and especially with this pro-bono (free) basis on which I am working, I cannot go and do this myself. "
Bali's High Court has agreed to hear testimony from new witnesses backing Corby's claims that 4.1kg of marijuana found in her luggage at Bali airport last October was put there by someone else, possibly baggage handlers at Brisbane airport.
Corby was sentenced to 20 years in a Bali prison in May.
The trial will reopen on Wednesday, but so far only an Indonesian legal expert, Jakarta-based law professor Indriyanto Seno Adji, has agreed to testify about police shortcomings in the case against Corby.
Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty has refused to take the stand, saying he can add nothing to evidence already before the Denpasar District Court.
Justice Minister Chris Ellison this week said the Australian Government was unable to offer immunity for anyone testifying in Australia, including prisoners named by Victorian jail inmate John Patrick Ford in Corby's original trial.
Hutapea said he had asked a crime reporter with a Sydney newspaper to testify and would soon write to a journalist with the AAP news agency.
"I have no other choice, but I just need someone to say there are dirty things that happen in the airport," he said.
"There is nobody, because I asked Mick Keelty and he doesn't want to come.
"It would be good for AAP to do this, as it is a humanitarian mission. "
Hutapea said the trial reopening would go ahead on Wednesday.
He hopes the head of the Bali drug squad Bambang Sugiarto will testify.
