Michelle Leslie’s defence a lie

Hardly surprising, but it turns out that Michelle Leslie’s whole defence was built on a bunch of lies.

Apparently it cost some $600,000 in legal fees and other expenses, including bribes, to get her off a potential 15 year gaol term in Bali. Nice to be well connnected and have plenty of money to throw around - maybe that’s Schapelle’s problem?

Leslie, her lawyers and advisers have said she did not take ecstasy, that she did not know what the pills found in her bag were, that a friend had slipped them in her bag, and that they were substitutes for Ritalin. It appears these were concoctions by her defence team.

Some of the claims spread surreptitiously by her defence team - that the drugs belonged to the friends of powerful men with her when she was arrested, that the drugs were planted in her bag, and that her drug test result was faked - appear to be false.

Significantly, Leslie’s story has been challenged by the woman who was with her when she was arrested and who was publicly blamed by the Leslie camp for the pills in her bag.

In her only interview, the Singapore model Siti Nameera Azman said the Australian had planned to give the ecstasy pills to two other friends - but they decided at the last minute not to go to the dance party. False statements were later given to police to support Leslie’s claim that Azman - who Leslie had named as Mia - had slipped the pills into her handbag.

And despite Leslie’s fresh protests at a news conference yesterday that she is a Muslim, doubt has been cast on that aspect of her story. A friend who was with her on the night of her arrest says she was unaware Leslie had converted to Islam. Siti Nameera Azman, a Muslim, expressed surprise at Leslie’s claim she had converted to the faith.

I think that Miss Leslie is doing the right thing now, which is to lie low and say very little about what happened - which in reality is probably that she just got caught redhanded with the e’s. I suspect this decision has come following advice from her parents (which has gone to great lengths to support her) rather than the others who seemed to be advising her before she got home.