The British grandmother freed from death row in Bali is said to be flying home to the UK today after 13 years in prison.
Lindsay Sandiford, 69, and another British national are being allowed home under a repatriation agreement with Indonesia.
She is said to be due to leave Bali this afternoon on a 20-hour flight with a short layover before landing at Heathrow.
Sandiford, speaking via a pastor who has supported her case, has told of being allowed a ‘second chance’ at life with her family in England after spending 12 years facing execution in Bali for drug smuggling.
The mum-of-two is ‘seriously ill’ and has been examined by a doctor from the British consulate on the island, according to Yusril Ihza Mahendra, a senior Indonesian minister for legal affairs.
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One of the campaigners who has supported her over the years is Rev. Christie Buckingham, a pastor at Bayside Church in Melbourne, Australia, who is currently in Indonesia.
She told Metro: ‘We are deeply grateful for the courageous compassion shown by President Prabowo Subianto and the Indonesian government in their commitment to repatriate Lindsay Sandiford on humanitarian grounds. After 13 years, she is keen to be back home with her family.
‘She will forever be grateful for this second chance.’
Mr Mahendra has signed a repatriation agreement with the UK foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper.
Sandiford and another freed UK national, Shabab Shahabadi, 35, will be ‘paraded’ in front of the media one last time before being driven to Denpasar International Airport and handed over to UK ambassador Dominic Jermey, the Mirror reports.
‘Lindsay is old and sick,’ Mr Mahendra told Reuters.
‘In prison she had good behaviour so that was enough reason to satisfy the request from the United Kingdom government that she be returned home and complete her sentence there.’
Sandiford, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was sentenced to death in 2013 after being convicted of trafficking drugs into Bali.
Officers found nearly five kilos of cocaine with a street value of £1.6 million hidden in a false bottom of her suitcase after she had arrived on a flight from Thailand a year earlier.
The former legal secretary admitted the offences but said she only agreed to carry the stash after a drug syndicate threatened to harm her sons.
Both prisoners are said to have been suffering from health problems.
Sandiford, who is thought to have moved to Cheltenham from Redcar, Teesside, has been locked up in Kerobokan prison.
She reportedly spent her days behind bars knitting clothes and toys for her grandchildren, charities and church groups.
Sandiford’s sentencing to death by firing squad drew audible gasps of shock when it was announced at court in Bali.
She had claimed to have been coerced into acting as a mule for drug traffickers while fearing her sons were in danger, and Reprieve said she had been exploited due to mental health issues.
In 2015, she met her then two-year-old granddaughter, Ayla, for the first time in a room at the prison. At the time, Sandiford said: ‘I know this may be the first and last time I ever hold my granddaughter.’
Four years later, she said from prison: ‘Dying doesn’t bother me.
‘What I am uncomfortable about is the public humiliation.
‘You’re dragged half-way around the country and paraded in front of the press before being executed and that will be the worst thing for me.
‘My attitude is “If you want to shoot me, shoot me. Get on with it.”
‘I’ve done a terrible thing, I know, but the worst thing is the ritual public humiliation they seem to enjoy.’
Sandiford has also said she envisaged not wearing a blindfold in front of a firing squad and singing Magic Moments by Perry Como.
The agreement brings an end to an ordeal which at one point left Sandiford fearing execution at 72 hours’ notice.
Two separate appeals – to the High Court in Bali and the Indonesian Supreme Court – were rejected.
A spokesperson for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has said: ‘We are supporting two British nationals detained in Indonesia and are in close contact with the Indonesian authorities to discuss their return to the UK.’
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