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BRISBANE - The father of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby has died in a Brisbane hospital after a long battle with cancer.
A family friend today said Michael Corby had succumbed to prostate cancer.
Schapelle Corby, 30, is serving a 20-year sentence at Kerobokan prison in Bali after more than 4kg of marijuana was found in her bodyboard bag at Denpasar Airport, Bali, in October 2004.
It is not known whether she has been informed of her father's death.
Mr Corby was well enough to visit his daughter for Christmas 2004, and before her trial in May 2005.
Before the trial, he said he had packed the bodyboard bag in question and did not see the marijuana.
He claimed his daughter had not touched drugs since her school days, and said he felt helpless as she fought to clear her name.
"I don't know the system, it's just foreign to me," he said.
"I'm just helpless and there's nothing I can do."
In February 2006, reports linked Mr Corby to a man charged over a marijuana growing operation.
It was reported police raided the man's property at Gladstone in central Queensland, next to a property owned by Mr Corby, in September 2004 - a month before Schapelle Corby was arrested.
Mr Corby's property was not searched.
He was one of a number of people in the family with a drug conviction, having been fined for cannabis possession in the 1970s.
Schapelle Corby's half-brother, James Kisina, 20, was convicted in 2006 of stealing drugs during a home invasion, and another half-brother, Clinton Rose, also has been convicted of drug possession.
- AAP
