A British grandmother who was facing execution for drug trafficking charges in Bali is going to be repatriated to the UK.
After talks between the UK and Indonesia, 69-year-old Lindsay Sandiford will be on a flight leaving Bali early on Friday, according to officials.
Sandiford was sentenced to death by firing squad in January 2013 for drug trafficking after she was found with cocaine worth an estimated £1.6 million as she arrived.
Indonesia’s highest court upheld it seven months later. She has been imprisoned in Kerobokan prison on Bali island. She admitted to the offences but also claimed threats to her son’s life had coerced her.
The severity of the sentence was met with shock because prosecutors had not recommended the death penalty for her. The ruling was condemned by the British government and anti-death penalty activists.
Sandiford will be joined by Shahab Shahabadi, a 35-year-old man who was serving a life sentence for drug-related charges imposed in 2014.
Lindsay Sandiford, right, and Shahab Shahabadi, left, before their repatriation. Credit: AP
Official Yusril Ihza Mahendra, who is the coordinating minister for law, human rights, immigration and correctional institutions, has previously said the two convicts had serious health problems.
Mahendra and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper signed the agreement to transfer them on October 21.
Shahabadi was arrested in Jakarta as part of an investigation into an international drug trafficking network. Prosecutors said he sent 30 kilograms (15 pounds) of methamphetamine powder in several shipments from Iran to his partner for distribution in Jakarta, before finally arriving in Jakarta himself.
Shahabadi has been imprisoned in Nusa Kambangan prison island, known as the Alcatraz of Indonesia, since 2014 and was moved Thursday to Bali ahead of his repatriation.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.
About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including nearly 100 foreigners, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data shows. Indonesia’s last executions, of a citizen and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
Indonesia, under President Prabowo Subianto, has sent several foreign prisoners home under bilateral agreements with their countries.
They included a Filipina who faced the death penalty for drugs and five Australians convicted of heroin trafficking, and Serge Atlaoui, an ailing French national on death row who has spent almost 20 years in an Indonesian prison for drug offences.
Subianto surprised the nation barely two months after he took office in October by saying he planned to grant clemency to some 44,000 inmates nationwide – some of them imprisoned for political reasons – as a way to help unify the country.
The first group of 1,178 began leaving prisons in August.
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