“POLICE have seized photographs of Schapelle Corby with a man who has just been charged with marijuana smuggling.
The alleged drug dealer is pictured alone with Corby in some photographs and with Corby and another couple in others.
They were found during a recent police search of the alleged dealer's home in South Australia.
He was the target of a joint SA-Queensland police operation into a hydroponic marijuana smuggling ring allegedly operating between the two states.
The photographs were taken before Corby was charged in October last year with importing 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali in her bodyboard bag.
Did Keith Moor see the photos? While he describes McCauley as an "alleged drug dealer" because to do otherwise would land him in court he makes the allegation that “the photographs were taken before Corby was charged in October” as if it were a proven fact without explaining how this conclusion was reached.
We can only assume that Moor never saw these photos. It's time everyone saw them:
South Australian Drug Dealer PHOTO 1:
(From Left) Rosleigh Rose and her partner Greg Martin, Malcolm McCauley, and ‘Dave’ the Good Samaritan outside the entrance to Kerobokan prison. Note the timber door entrance on the left and the carpark in the background. I have concealed Dave's face. He should not be penalised for doing the right thing.
South Australian Drug Dealer PHOTO 2:
(From Left) Rosleigh Rose, ‘Dave’, and Malcolm McCauley in The Secret Garden Bar in Bali. The beer Rosleigh is drinking is in a "Free Schapelle" stubby holder.
South Australian Drug Dealer PHOTO 3:
This is a photo of the South Australian drug dealer, Malcolm McCauley posing with Schapelle in the visiting area of Kerobokan Prison.
Obviously Keith Moor was wrong. There was nothing in the photos to suggest that they were taken before Schapelle's arrest and incarceration. In fact, with the most casual of investigations, the photo showing the entrance to Kerobokan Prison and the other showing the 'Free Schapelle' stubby holder demonstrates that these photos were taken after Schapelle's arrest.
What's more, the only other female in the photos was Rosleigh Rose, Schapelle's mother.
"The alleged drug dealer is pictured alone with Corby in some photographs and with Corby and another couple in others."
This indicated that whoever identified Schapelle in the photos was unable to recognise Rosleigh – the most outspoken and visible family member in Australia's saturation media coverage. This is beyond belief and suggests a smear campaign to force upon the public the belief that Schapelle was involved with the drug trade.
In "Corby's drug sentence may be increased" on Seven.com of the same day written by Marian Carroll and Olivia Rondonuwu comes the following extract:
"If we can get copies of the photos, we will send them to the Supreme Court," prosecutor Ni Wayan Sinaryati told AAP.
"It would strengthen our case because her punishment has been decreased, and I hope these photos will convince the judges she is guilty."
While the photos were not seen in Indonesia we will never know if Moor's story was responsible for the increase in Schapelle's sentence from 15 to 20 years. It certainly didn't help. However, what happened next was both tragic and unforgivable.
From the same article:
"We can't comment because we don't have the man's name, we haven't seen the photos and we're unable to get in contact with the head of that investigation (in SA) until next week," Mercedes said.
As the allegation of Schapelle having a connection with the Australian
drug world gained public acceptance Schapelle’s mother was tormented by the revelation that she herself was in the photos. On the 13th of December The Daily Telegraph published "Distraught mum fears photos ‘her fault’" by Tony Wilson and Cindy Wockner.
A DISTRAUGHT Rosleigh Rose is certain she is responsible for daughter Schapelle Corby being photographed with an alleged drug smuggler.
Ms Rose spent yesterday trying to remember how and when the photos were taken after she discovered that she was also in the pictures.
"I kept thinking that we didn't know anyone in South Australia but ... I remembered two men that approached me and my partner Greg at the Secret Garden [a restaurant in Kuta] during the trial and the more I think about it, it had to be them," she said.
And then further on in the article:
"They seemed like a couple of nice Aussie battlers. Mal said he had a nine-year-old granddaughter who felt for Schapelle and they asked if they could go to the prison and meet her when we next visited her and we said it would be OK."
Despite the Corby family's claims the photos must have been taken in Bali, The Daily Telegraph has been told the photographs are not in a jail or garden setting.
On the 14th of December Rosleigh Rose flew to Adelaide to view the photographs. She knew the allegation that the photos were taken before Schapelle's arrest could not be true.
However, the South Australian Police commissioner, Mal Hyde, refused to allow Rosleigh to view them claiming that "her request would be considered along the lines of police operational needs." He also stated that the photos were being forwarded onto the Australian Federal Police.
In view of the fact that someone under Mal Hyde's authority had leaked the story to the media, such a position was indefensible. Since no investigation has ever been launched into who leaked the story we can only conclude that destroying Schapelle's chances of a positive outcome in her appeal was in line with police operational needs.
Since Rosleigh Rose was in the photographs she was a witness as to when and where the photos were taken. The actions of the SA Police and the AFP prove conclusively that they had no interest in investigating these photos or in discovering if their suspect, Malcolm McCauley was involved in transnational drug trafficking.
Their actions speak for them - they were only interested in fueling the Australian Government's smear campaign to convince the people that Schapelle was indeed guilty.
And, in the same breath as he denies the victim of these photographs the right of reply and the legal right of seeing the evidence against them, Mal Hyde, the Commissioner of South Australian Police futhers their "operational needs" by telling the media that "these photos do not appear to have been taken in a prison setting."
Certainly, the photos with Schapelle in them didn't look like Pentridge or Alcatraz but then they didn't have to. For them to have been taken after Schapelle's arrest those depicting Schapelle had to look like a Kerobokan Prison setting. And, unless this Keystone Cop was familiar with the visitor's area of Kerobokan Prison then he was not qualified to judge and ethically bound not to voice an opinion from ignorance.
Mick Phelan of the AFP said:
"We just can't release that property, even to look at, to other people. The property actually belongs to the person from whom it was seized."
It was starting to look as if the only hope the Corbys had of ever seeing those photos lay with Malcolm McCauley, the man that the South Australian police had arrested.
However, Malcolm McCauley remained silent on the matter and in the words of his lawyer, Robert Harrap, "his client would not attempt to clear Corby's name or comment about the photos because it was not in his best interests."
Let me clarify this. Schapelle had been convicted of trafficking marijuana from Australia to Indonesia. McCauley stood accused of cultivating marijuana in Australia. How was allowing the possibility that his marijuana was the same marijuana found in Schapelle's luggage to go unchallenged be "in his best interests"?
By clearing Schapelle, he would be clearing himself of
transnational drug trafficking. The only possible explanation for Mr Harrap's legal advice for McCauley to remain silent was that pressures were being placed on McCauley to not clear Schapelle.
No one was aware that a second set of prints existed and the story would have ended there had it not been for the Good Samaritan 'Dave'. Rosleigh and her family would have been powerless to protest and Australia would believe that solid evidence existed that proved Schapelle's complicity in drug running.
'Dave' had met Mal McCauley on the flight to Bali and they had both met Rosleigh and Greg in the Secret Garden Bar. On the evening of the 15th of December, 'Dave' contacted Rosleigh and gave her his photoset so that she could then prove that they were not taken prior to Schapelle's arrest.
What is very clear is that discovering when the photographs were taken was of no interest to our government authorities. Had the photographs never been seen we would have no cause to doubt Mal Hyde's assertions that "they were not taken in a prison setting."
"When they thought I’d never see these photos they told me they were of Schapelle and I dressed up as if we were going to dinner with two older men sometime before 2004. Why would Mick Keelty lie like that?" - Rosleigh Rose
More than a month after the story broke, on the 13th of January 2006, The Adelaide Advertiser published one of the photos for the first time along with McCauley's explanation of how he and a mate had visited an innocent tourist in Kerobokan prison and posed for photographs as had many other Australian tourists over the past three years.
Even though "Corby in the clear" states categorically that Schapelle had not met McCauley prior to her arrest, the Herald-Sun never printed a retraction of Moor's original article.
Two days after 'Dave' gave his photoset to Rosleigh, Moor did write a 'back-flip' of sorts with Sam Riches on the 17th of December 2005 in "Corby Pictures Taken Inside Jail":
The Herald Sun revealed a week ago that police in South Australia had seized photos of Corby with a man who was recently charged with marijuana smuggling.
The alleged drug dealer is pictured alone with Corby in some photographs.
Police initially thought they were taken before Corby was charged in October last year with importing 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali.
SA police commissioner Mal Hyde told Ms Rose in a fax this week the seized photos "do not appear to have been taken in a prison setting".
But the second man taken to the jail by Ms Rose, who gave his name as Dave, contacted The Advertiser in Adelaide on Thursday and confirmed Ms Rose's statements the photos were taken inside the jail.
This is not an apology. It is an excuse for why he wrote the original story. Did he envisage a law suit now that Rosleigh had access to the photos?
He, Keith Moor, broke the story but he begins his article with "The Herald-Sun revealed a week ago."
He then goes on to say "Police initially thought" but 'initial thought' was a far cry from "The photos were taken before Corby was charged." For Moor to have ommitted 'appears to be,' 'said to be,' 'reported' or 'alleged' was criminal and may have resulted in an innocent woman being forced to endure five extra years in prison for a wrongful conviction.
The South Australian Police took the photos from the home of Malcolm McCauley because they believed they may have been evidence of further drug connections. No doubt, McCauley told the police when and where they were taken.
In "Schapelle letter made grandfather proud," an article accompanying "Corby in the clear", McCauley says:
"Did I keep it a secret about meeting Schapelle? Certainly not. I showed the photos to all my friends."
In such circumstances for a police officer to leak the story that photos had been found that implicated Schapelle in criminal drug activities prior to her arrest was no less than criminal mischief.
This crime was compounded when Senior South Australian and Federal Police voiced opinions without investigation and endeavoured to prevent a material witness from identifying the evidence. If it was not evidence of possible criminal activity then what right did the South Australian Police have to sieze the photos in the first place?
If Police can use the media to vilify without placing the 'evidence' before the people then we truly do live in a police state and the rule of law is gone.
Many Australians were left with the impression that yet again evidence existed that confirmed Schapelle's guilt. Unfortunately, these people are not aware that had Schapelle been guilty all the Australian authorities had to do was to investigate her, her assets, her purchase history and her activities prior to her departure - they never did.
The Australian media colluded with the Australian government to paint Schapelle's alleged crime as an "Indonesian matter" as if it was not an accusation of transnational drug trafficking. We listen to Mick Keelty discussing the need for 'upstream and downstream' investigations of the Bali 9 case and we wonder why they feared investigating the Corby case so much. Was it because they knew Schapelle was innocent?
Soon, when human rights organisations the world over get wind of this, our reputation for 'a fair go' and our courageous ANZAC image will be in the toilet. It already is. When the Australian people wake up to the fact that the 'South Australian drug dealer photo scandal' wasn't merely a case of 'where there's smoke there's fire'; it was yet another failed attempt by our government to make an innocent woman appear guilty.
The big question is who are they protecting? Australian baggage handlers? Australian criminals? The need to spend money on airports? I don't think so. The evidence points to the marijuana being planted in Bali and that is why there have been so many failed attempts to convince the Australian people that the Indonesian court was justified in finding Schapelle guilty.
