DENPASAR, INDONESIA
Two British drug convicts including a grandmother on death row left a Bali jail on Thursday, as part of a deal to send them home on humanitarian grounds.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, but has moved to release more than half a dozen high-profile detainees in the last year, including a Filipina mother on death row.
Lindsay Sandiford, 69, was sentenced to death on the tourist island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. She will be repatriated along with Shahab Shahabadi, 36, who was serving a life sentence for drug offences after his arrest in 2014.
Both were presented before the media in a handover ceremony at Kerobokan jail, with Sandiford covering her face.
I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram, an official from Indonesia’s law and human rights ministry, said their “detention will be moved to the United Kingdom” under the bilateral deal. “For Lindsay and Shahab, after we hand (them) over to the United Kingdom government, (they) are fully responsible for the legal decision that will be given there but still respecting our legal decision.”
Nyoman added that both prisoners are due to take off on a Qatar Airways flight after midnight to London via a transit in Doha. Sandiford wound up behind bars in Indonesia after customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated $2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in her suitcase when she landed in Bali in 2012. Sandiford admitted the offences but said she had agreed to carry the narcotics after a drug syndicate threatened to kill her son.
The repatriation comes after Indonesia’s senior law and human rights minister, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, signed a deal with British foreign minister Yvette Cooper last month for the transfer of Sandiford and Shahabadi.Both prisoners are suffering from severe health problems.
