A British grandmother who has spent the last 12 years on death row in Indonesia for drug-related crimes will be sent back to the UK.
Lindsay Sandiford, alongside fellow British citizen Shahab Shahabadi, will be repatriated back to the UK as part of an agreement signed by the Indonesian government.
A government source said today: ‘The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed.’
Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs.
Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated $2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when she arrived in Bali on a flight from Thailand in 2012.
Shahabadi was arrested in 2014 on drug charges, according to information shared by the source.
The government source listed Sandiford as 68 years of age, while public information showed her to be 69 years old.
The British embassy in Jakarta directed all queries to the Indonesian government.
A press conference for the ‘release of two British nationals’ was scheduled for later Tuesday by Indonesian authorities and the British ambassador to Indonesia, according to a release by the coordinating Ministry of Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correction.
Lindsay Sandifordn (pictured) was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs
Lindsay June Sandiford being escorted by an armed customs personnel at a customs office in Denpasar on Bali island on May 28, 2012
Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs
Sandiford admitted the offences but said she had agreed to carry the narcotics after a drug syndicate threatened to kill her son.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, and dozens of foreigners remain on death row in Indonesia for drug offences.
Sandiford’s case generated huge media attention back home in Britain, with the Mail on Sunday publishing an article written by her in which she detailed her fear of death.
‘My execution is imminent, and I know I might die at any time now. I could be taken tomorrow from my cell,’ she wrote in 2015.
‘I have started to write goodbye letters to members of my family.’
Sandiford, originally from Redcar in northeast England, wrote in the article that she had planned to sing the cheery Perry Como hit ‘Magic Moments’ when facing the firing squad.
Since 2013, she has been incarcerated in a cramped cell inside Bali’s Kerobokan Prison – one of the island’s toughest institutions and the site of many deadly riots.
For over a decade, she awaited news of her transfer to Nusa Kambangan, known as the notorious Execution Island, to face death by the firing squad.
The sprawling prison complex, located off the Cilacap coast in central Java, is home to a number of prisons of varying levels of security.
There, the least volatile can expect to spend their days working in the fields and carving gems.
But for those targeted by Indonesia’s strict drug laws, inmates are kept in pained isolation as they await the death penalty.
Historically, Indonesia’s approach has drawn parallels to the efforts of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, whose death squads and public approval of vigilante justice horrified most of the international community.
Former Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered police to shoot suspected drug dealers, urging firmness against those trying to bring narcotics into the majority Muslim country.
Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated $2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when she arrived in Bali on a flight from Thailand in 2012
Sandiford admitted the offences but said she had agreed to carry the narcotics after a drug syndicate threatened to kill her son
A view of Sodong port in Nusa Kambangan island, the main entrance gate to Nusa Kambangan – known as ‘Indonesian Alcatraz’
Prisoners convicted of drug offences are moved to Nusa Kambangan Island in January 2022
Earlier this year, Sandiford became hopeful that she would be released from Kerobokan Prison due to a change in the country’s law, and even began giving away her clothes to fellow inmates in anticipation of her freedom.
The institution, known ironically as Hotel K, houses 1,300 – four times the amount of people the prison was built for in 1979 – and has previously been described by inmates as a ‘hellhole’ with frequent ‘murders, rapes, drug overdoses and bashings’.
Her friends described how she had ‘slumped into depression’ while waiting to be released for over a decade.
Sandiford, who now suffers from arthritis, spent her days knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell that she shared with four other women, most of them poorly-educated local women convicted of drug offences.
One Indonesian woman imprisoned for corruption said last March that Sandiford was seen as the jail’s ‘queen’.
Examples of the drug mule’s special treatment allegedly include being able to order medium-rare steak once a week.
The grandmother led knitting classes for her fellow inmates, during which she made clothes and toys for her grandchildren, charities and church groups.
In an astonishingly frank interview with the Daily Mail in 2019 while she was on Death Row, Sandiford explained why she made the decision not to lodge an appeal.
‘I really cannot face asking anyone for help or having to deal with another lawyer. I just can’t face it. I’ve been burnt enough times.
‘I’ve had 10 different lawyers. If I actually turned my mind to the legal process I would get angry and bitter and it would be destructive.’
She was visited by her two young granddaughters – both born in the UK after her arrest – and the thought of them gave her comfort throughout her time locked up behind bars.
‘In spite of everything, I feel blessed,’ she said.
‘I have been blessed to live long enough to see my two sons grow up into fine young men and blessed to have been able to meet my two grandchildren. A lot of people don’t get that in their lifetime.’
Asked whether she feared execution by firing squad, she insisted: ‘It won’t be a hard thing for me to face anymore. It’s not particularly a death I would choose but them again I wouldn’t choose dying in agony from cancer either.
‘I do feel I can cope with it. But when it happens I don’t want my family to come. I don’t want any fuss at all. The one thing certain about life is no one gets out alive.’
Inside the prison, announcements and sirens on loudspeakers are blasted every day and inmates are constantly vying for space in the crowded cells.
Rachel Dougall, who was sentenced to a year in the squalid prison for failing to report a crime, told Daily Mail Australia in 2017 she suffered a nervous breakdown while inside after being locked up with drug addicts and sexually aggressive inmates.
‘Most of the women were on drugs virtually every day. If you had money the guards would get you anything you wanted,’ she said.
‘Inmates in the men’s prison next door even paid prostitutes for overnight visits,’ she added.
She said she was beaten several times before she was released in May 2013.
Sandiford, from Yorkshire, has no previous convictions, and claimed she was forced by a UK-based drugs syndicate to smuggle cocaine from Thailand to Bali by threats to the life of her son in Britain.
Barbed wire fences encircle the Kerobokan jail in Denpasar on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali
The syndicate’s alleged ringleader Julian Ponder from Brighton, was freed from Kerobokan prison in late 2017
She received a death sentence despite cooperating with police in a sting to arrest people higher up in the syndicate, sparking an outcry from human rights lawyers and former UK Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald who said she had been treated with ‘quite extraordinary severity’.
And a ruling from Supreme Court judges in London said ‘substantial mitigating factors’ had been overlooked in her original trial.
The syndicate’s alleged ringleader Julian Ponder from Brighton, was freed from Kerobokan prison in late 2017 following rumours that more than £1 million in bribes were paid to drop trafficking charges against him, his former partner Rachel Dougall, and fellow Brit Paul Beales.
Dougall served one year and Beales four years for involvement in the conspiracy.
Ponder was cleared of smuggling but was convicted of possessing 23g of cocaine and was sentenced to six years in prison in 2013.
Last year, he told the Daily Mail that Sandiford set him up but he still thinks she ought to be freed from death row.
‘For Lindsay to wait for that knock on the door every day is beyond cruel. She’s been punished enough,’ the former antiques dealer said.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has moved in recent months to repatriate several high-profile inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, back to their home countries.
In December, Filipina inmate Mary Jane Veloso tearfully reunited with her family after nearly 15 years on death row.
In February, French national Serge Atlaoui, 61, was returned home after 18 years on death row in Indonesia.
Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one of its own citizens and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
Indonesia’s Immigration and Corrections Ministry said more than 90 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges, as of early November.
The Indonesian government recently signalled it could resume executions.
The Daily Mail has contacted the UK’s Foreign Office and the Home Office for comment.
More to follow.
