A British grandmother who was sentenced to the death penalty for drug-trafficking will be freed from one of Indonesia’s most notorious prisons and returned to the UK, ending a 12-year ordeal for her family.
Lindsay Sandiford, 69, could be free to return home from Bali on Tuesday after an Indonesian government source told AFP that an agreement had been reached with the UK government.
“The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said.
Shahab Shahabadi, a 35-year-old British national who was arrested in 2014 and later imprisoned on drug charges, will also be released.
Sandiford, from Teesside, was arrested at Bali airport in 2012 after customs officers discovered a haul of cocaine worth an estimated £1.6m in a hidden compartment of her suitcase when she arrived from Thailand. She was sentenced to death the following year.
Sandiford claimed that a British gang had forced her to smuggle drugs from Thailand to Bali and threatened to kill one of her two sons if she refused to cooperate.
Indonesia has some of the strictest drug laws in the world, with multiple foreign nationals facing death row over the years for drug offences.
A statement by the Coordinating Ministry for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correction confirmed a press conference was scheduled later on Tuesday to announce the “release of two British nationals”.
Sandiford has been held in the Kerobokan Prison, one of Indonesia’s worst jails that holds 1,000 more inmates than the 357 it was built for in 1979.
ABC News said in a 2017 report from inside Kerobokan that almost 80 per cent of its prisoners are in on drug charges.
Kerobokan has seen several riots in the past decade alone, some of them deadly.
The New York Times reported that staff are bribed by wealthier inmates to give them drugs and even let them out on trips.
While the prison is high-security, breakouts have occurred. Notably, in 2017 four foreign inmates escaped by digging a 50ft tunnel under the prison walls from an open courtyard.
The prison saw another major breakout in 1999 when prisoners set fire to their mattresses and overwhelmed the guards trying to contain the flames. Almost 300 prisoners escaped.
At the time of Sandiford’s arrest, there were 90 prisoners awaiting execution in Kerobokan.
Indonesia’s strict laws surrounding drug trafficking have resulted in international tensions with other countries.
In 2015, Jakarta faced a diplomatic crisis when two Australians convicted as part of a heroin smuggling squad were executed by firing squad.
Sandiford launched an appeal to have her sentence reduced, but it was rejected, which is often the case for drug appeal cases in Indonesia.
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