Lindsay Sandiford, a grandma on death row for 10 years for drug smuggling, has one final chance to escape firing squad. She’s been in an Indonesian prison since 2013 for trying to bring a huge amount of cocaine into Bali.
Now, because Indonesia is changing its laws, she could get out of the death penalty.
Other prisoners say Lindsay has hope now. They even showed a surprising photo of her teaching knitting to others in jail.
A friend inside said that Lindsay, who is 67, gets treated well and is known as the “grandmother” in prison and is given steak dinners to enjoy.
Due to her good behaviour over the last 10 years, her death sentence might be changed to life in prison this January. If this happens, the hope is her lawyers might try to get her back to the UK, where she could be set free because she’s already spent so much time locked up in Indonesia, reports the Mirror.
One prisoner shared: “There is hope that she can go home. If she can get through to 2025 then she thinks she may be able to avoid the death penalty.”
British people who look after her have also started visiting more, from four times a year to once a month.
Tonight, Felicity Gerry KC, a big human rights lawyer who met Lindsay in 2015, says she should be brought back to Britain.
She stated: “Indonesia is taking an important step in recognising the need to commute the sentences of those subject to the death penalty, especially women. Lindsay co-operated with the authorities and explained levels of coercion that should have at least mitigated her position.”
“The Government should be taking active steps to facilitate her return to the UK, either to serve a sentence near her family or to consider her release.”
The Mirror managed to get into Kerobokan jail in Bali, where Sandiford spends each day waiting to be taken from her rat-filled cell to Nusa Kambangan also known as Execution Island. The legal secretary, from Cheltenham, Glos, is the only inmate on death row.
It’s said she had given up all hope of an appeal that would reverse her sentence, until now.
A photo of Sandiford in prison shows other prisoners paying close attention as she teaches them how to knit. Her cellmate, an Indonesian jailed for corruption who has spent two years with the gran, said: “She is the grandmother of the prison, the Queen.
“She is the only one who can order steak from the prison cafe. She has it medium-rare, normally once a week. Everyone loves her, she teaches people how to knit, she hosts regular classes, and shows them how to look after themselves. No date has been set for the execution. She is scared of dying but she has accepted it.”
But other prisoners say Sandiford is “foul-mouthed, antagonistic” and makes her cellmates want to leave. A former cellmate said: “Lindsay is aggressively protective of herself. That’s the way she has learned to cope. She spends 99% of her time in her room. They have activities, like nail painting or hair styling, but Lindsay does none of them. There was a Ukrainian girl who was put in her cell, but the girl requested to move.”
“The way I read her is that she’s trying to survive. She started getting privileges, so all the girls slept on the floor but she got a mattress. And then she got cooking utensils because she didn’t like the prison food. Lindsay has a sweet tooth, she likes 70% dark chocolate.
“She’d be brought chocolate and fresh vegetables from supporters. I think the prison recognised that she’s not a young woman, and she came from the West. But being in Kerobokan is very difficult. If you go in as a smart person, you come out half as smart. There’s nothing to fire the neutrons while you’re in jail.”
After her arrest in 2012 with the class A drugs, Sandiford said drug bosses threatened her son to make her do it. She changed her story when she found out she could face the death penalty for drug trafficking.
Sandiford told the police that she was asked to transport the drugs by Julian Ponder. Although she agreed to help the police catch Ponder, a British antique dealer, she was subsequently charged.
The court in Bali sent her to prison for more than the 15 years which prosecutors had suggested, as they believed she harmed tourism and drug prevention efforts.
Ponder, who was 43 years old and from Brighton, avoided charges of smuggling but was found guilty of possessing 23g of cocaine – a crime that could result in a lifetime in jail. Despite prosecutors in Bali pushing for a seven-year sentence, he was jailed for six years and given a fine of £65,000.
His lawyer, Arie Budiman Soenardi, revealed that he wouldn’t recommend his client challenge the sentence, commenting: “The sentence is quite light, not far from what the prosecutors aimed for.”
A spokesperson from the Foreign Office shared this evening: “We are supporting a British woman detained in Bali and are in contact with her family and the Indonesian authorities.”
