A British grandmother who is being returned to the UK after spending 12 years on death row in Indonesia was granted repatriation after doctors declared her ‘seriously ill.’
Lindsay Sandiford, 69, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs.
Indonesia’s senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said Sandiford, who was found with an estimated £1.6million worth of cocaine in her suitcase in 2012, was declared ‘seriously ill’ by two doctors.
She will be transferred back to the UK, alongside Shahab Shahabadi, a 35-year-old serving a life sentence for drug offences following his arrest in 2014 who is now ‘suffering from various serious illnesses, including mental health issues’.
They will be repatriated under a deal signed by British foreign minister Yvette Cooper, a process that is expected to take up to two weeks.
‘We agreed to grant the transfers of the prisoners to the UK. The agreement has been signed,’ Yusril told reporters at a press conference in the capital Jakarta.
It was unclear if Sandiford would remain at Bali’s overcrowded and most notorious prison Kerobokan before her transfer, or be moved to another facility.
Lindsay Sandiford (pictured) was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs
Customs officers found the stash of drugs 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. In 2013 she lost an appeal against her death sentence.
She wrote in a 2015 article for the Mail on Sunday that she was terrified by the prospect of her execution: ‘My execution is imminent, and I know I might die at any time now. I could be taken tomorrow from my cell.
‘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.
She became friends in prison with Andrew Chan, an Australian killed by firing squad for his role in a plan to smuggle heroin as one of the so-called ‘Bali Nine’ group of smugglers.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws but has moved to release half a dozen high-profile detainees in the last year, including a Filipina mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called ‘Bali Nine’ drug ring.
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
The nation’s immigration and corrections ministry said more than 90 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges, as of early November.
But Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has repatriated several high-profile inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, since he took office in October last year.
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.
Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one of its own citizens and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
But the government recently signalled it could resume them.
Since 2013, Sandiford 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 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.
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.
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
Lindsay June Sandiford being escorted by an armed customs personnel at a customs office in Denpasar on Bali island on May 28, 2012
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, spends her days knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell that she shares 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 included her 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 a final 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.’
Well-wishers had previously raised over £40,000 for an appeal against Sandiford’s death penalty that was spent by a succession of Indonesian lawyers and legal assistants.
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.
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
‘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 then 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.’
She continued: ‘Of course I think about being executed. Who wouldn’t? But what keeps me going is the fact I have seen my boys become men and become fathers and I have two beautiful granddaughters and I’ve had the chance to meet them both.
‘I have pictures of my granddaughters around my bed in my cell and I wake up and I see their faces and I smile. I am sad I can’t be a full-time grandmother but I have lived long enough to meet them and hold them and tell them that I love them.’
Sandiford 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.
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.
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
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.
An FCDO spokesperson said: ‘We are supporting two British Nationals detained in Indonesia and are in close contact with the Indonesian authorities to discuss their return to the UK.’