By Greg Stolz - February 01, 2006
SCHAPELLE Corby's mother yesterday slammed as "total lies" damaging new claims linking her family to the drug trade, and said she was considering legal action.
Rosleigh Rose returned from visiting her jailed daughter in Bali on Monday night, only to walk into a fresh media storm concerning her ex-husband and still close friend Michael Corby.
Mr Corby has been linked to a central Queensland man charged recently over a large-scale hydroponic marijuana growing operation.
Police raided the man's Gladstone property - next to one owned by Mr Corby - in September 2004, a month before Schapelle Corby was arrested in Bali with 4.1kg of marijuana in her bodyboard bag.
Mr Corby and the man, known only as Tony, were also friends, neighbours and workmates in the central Queensland mining town of Middlemount.
Mr Corby, who was fined for marijuana possession in the 1970s, later followed Tony 500km to Gladstone and purchased an adjoining property.
The association was revealed by the ABC's 7.30 Report, which also claimed Schapelle Corby's Balinese lawyers had rejected an Australian Federal Police offer to DNA-test the marijuana found in the bodyboard bag to determine the drug's origin.
Ms Rose said she and her family were furious at the latest allegations, which come two weeks after the arrest of her son James Kisina over a violent drug-related home invasion.
Police alleged Kisina was suspected of involvement in his half-sister's Bali drug run.
"I've just had a gutful of people telling lies about us," Ms Rose said yesterday at her home at Loganlea, south of Brisbane.
"I just feel sick. I'm sick of all the lies and I'm going to get legal action (sic) this time."
Ms Rose said her ex-husband, who was still in Bali, was in "disbelief" about the latest claims concerning the family.
She said he had not lived at the Gladstone property for more than two years after moving to the Gold Coast for cancer treatment.
"Of course he wouldn't be involved in that bloody stuff (marijuana cultivation)," she said.
"If my neighbours are growing dope, does that mean I am too? That I'm a drug person? It (Tony's drug charges) has got nothing to do with us."
Ms Rose said her family and legal team had pushed for the marijuana found in her daughter's bodyboard bag to be tested but the Indonesian Government had refused.
"We were pushing to get it done because we were positive the marijuana came from Indonesia," she said.
"There's been no investigation done (about the drugs' origin) whatsoever."
Earlier this month, Schapelle Corby had her 20-year jail sentence for drug smuggling reinstated after it had been reduced to 15 years on appeal.
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