Indonesia signed an agreement on Tuesday to repatriate two British nationals, including a seriously ill grandmother on death row for more than a decade on drug charges, a minister said.
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.
Lindsay Sandiford, in her late 60s, 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.
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.
Senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said he had signed a deal with British foreign minister Yvette Cooper for the transfer of Sandiford and Shahab Shahabadi, a 35-year-old serving a life sentence for drug offences after his arrest in 2014.
“We agreed to grant the transfers of the prisoners to the UK. The agreement has been signed,” Yusril told reporters in the capital Jakarta, confirming an earlier AFP report about their repatriation.
The pair will be handed over after technical details of the transfer are agreed, which the minister said could take “around two weeks” to organise.
Britain’s foreign ministry told AFP it was “supporting two British nationals detained in Indonesia” and was working with Indonesian authorities “to discuss their return to the UK”.
Both prisoners are suffering from severe health problems.
Sandiford has been “examined by our doctor, as well as by the doctor from the British consulate in Bali, and is seriously ill”, said Yusril.
Shahabadi was “suffering from various serious illnesses, including mental health issues”, he added.
The minister identified Sandiford as 68 years old, though public information showed her to be 69.
It was unclear if Sandiford would remain at Bali’s overcrowded and most notorious prison, Kerobokan, or be moved to another facility before her transfer.
Indonesia’s immigration and corrections ministry said more than 90 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges, as of early November.
– Goodbye letters –
Sandiford’s case caught tabloid attention back in Britain, with one newspaper 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 the Mail on Sunday 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.
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 “Bali Nine” group.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has repatriated several high-profile inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, since he took office a year ago.
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.
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