2nd July 2008. DENPASAR, Indonesia (AFP) - Australian drug trafficker Schapelle Corby, who is serving 20 years in jail in Indonesia, was spotted Wednesday in a beauty salon on Bali where she is serving her time. Corby, found guilty of trafficking 4.1 kilograms (nine pounds) of marijuana in 2005, was escorted by two armed police officers as she emerged from the Gardenia Salon on the resort island, an AFP correspondent saw.
Wearing jeans, a blue cap and matching tank top, the 30-year-old tried to hide her face from journalists as she left the salon and was escorted back to an adjacent hospital where she was admitted last month for depression. She made no comment and prison authorities were unavailable to clarify why she was allowed to leave the hospital, where she is under constant guard. Staff at the salon also refused to talk to the media.
Friends of the salon staff however said Corby had had her hair done and enjoyed a soothing spa treatment. An employee of a nearby market said she also did some shopping there on Tuesday afternoon, again with an escort of two police officers. "She spent quite a long time here, almost two hours. She bought some snacks and clothes. She had a look out the door before she left," he told AFP. The former beauty therapist is reported to have slumped into depression after Indonesia's Supreme Court rejected her final appeal in March.
Corby, who turns 31 next week, has always maintained her innocence and claims international drug smugglers placed the marijuana in her luggage. It was seized from her unlocked surfboard bag when she arrived on the palm-fringed island for a holiday in October 2004.
Corby's sentence outraged many Australians, partly due to its severity and partly because many believed the photogenic beautician's claims of innocence. She shares a prison on the island with the so-called Bali Nine, a gang of Australians convicted of smuggling heroin from Indonesia to Australia in 2005. The gang's three ring-leaders, Scott Rush, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, are on death row, while the six other members are serving prison sentences ranging from life to 20 years
