Police uncover Corby breakout plan
Ellen Whinnett
17jun05
AUSTRALIAN Federal Police are investigating a plan to recruit ex-soldiers to break Schapelle Corby out of jail in Bali.
A South Australian man is offering to pay crack ex-soldiers for weapons, false passports and expertise to bst Corby out of Indonesia and spirit her away to a secret location.
The man, Mark Streater, says he has the resources to fund the operation and has already secured recruits.
Mr Streater said the operation was "100 per cent do-able" and insisted it was genuine break-out plan.
"I have no doubt someone will get her out of the country," he said.
An AFP spokeswoman in Canberra said agents were now aware of the plan and were "assessing its implications".
Rumours of an attempted jail break first surfaced days after Corby was sentenced on May 27 to 20 years' jail for smuggling 4.1kg of marijuana into Bali.
Security was tightened around the grim Kerobokan Prison at Kuta, where the 27-year-old former Gold Coast beauty student is serving her sentence.
Mr Streater said he had nothing to do with those rumours and had, until now, managed to keep his campaign a secret.
He had placed an advertisement on a website for guerillas and mercenaries, asking for people interested in a rescue mission to contact him.
Corby is not mentioned by name.
But a would-be mercenary who responded to the advertisement said Mr Streater had told him it was a plan to release a woman called Schapelle Corby and take her to another location, probably in Asia.
He said it would not be possible to keep her in Australia because of extradition arrangements between the countries.
The would-be mercenary, who does not live in Australia, contacted the Herald Sun with details of the plan, unsuccessfully seeking payment for his story.
It is believed the organisers of the campaign toyed with the idea of hiring a plane but decided instead to look for a more discreet fishing vessel.
The plan was to get Corby out of Indonesia, by whatever means possible, then take her to Darwin and transfer her to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia or Malaysia.
When asked by the Herald Sun, Mr Streater said he was the man behind the campaign.
He said he was motivated by a belief that Corby was innocent.
Mr Streater said he had also had problems with Customs and Australian Federal Police officers, some of whom he believed were responsible for smuggling drugs through Australian airports.
He would not say who his financial backers were, saying only that it was a businessman but not Gold Coast mobile phone re-seller Ron Bakir.
Mr Streater said his antipathy towards Customs and the AFP came after he was involved in a dispute when a collection of CDs he imported into Australia were damaged on their arrival.
He said Australia Post had agreed to pay 50 per cent of the damage but Customs had refused.
Mr Streater said he had later been convicted of making threats against a senior Customs official through abusive telephone messages, and had spent 10 days in the Alfred hospital's psychiatrist ward.
He said he had been contacted several times by an anonymous man who said some Customs and AFP officers were involved in drug smuggling through airports.
"I had recruited a couple of intelligence officers and some special forces," Mr Streater said.
"If people take me seriously this is going to open up a huge can of worms."
