Indonesia to repatriate British grandma on death row in drug case
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British national Lindsay Sandiford after she was sentenced to death in Bali in January 2013 for trafficking drugs.
PHOTO: AFP
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JAKARTA – Indonesia signed an agreement on Oct 21 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, including a Filipino mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
Lindsay Sandiford, who is now 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 US$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 to the offences, but said she 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 with British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper a deal 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 Britain. The agreement has been signed,” Mr Yusril told reporters at a press conference in 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.
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 Mr 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.
The British Embassy in Jakarta directed all queries to the Indonesian government.
It was unclear if Sandiford would remain at Bali’s overcrowded and most notorious Kerobokan prison before her transfer or be moved to another facility.
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 home 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 British newspaper The Mail On Sunday in 2015. “I have started to write goodbye letters to members of my family.”
Sandiford, originally from Redcar in north-east 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.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s administration has moved in recent months to repatriate several high-profile inmates, all sentenced for drug offences, back to their home countries.
In December 2024, Filipino inmate Mary Jane Veloso
In February 2025, French national Serge Atlaoui
Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one of its own citizens and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
The Indonesian government recently signalled it could resume executions. AFP
