British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford has been held for almost ten years in a notorious Indonesian prison as she awaits execution by firing squad. Sandiford has been incarcerated at Kerobokan Prison in Bali since 2013 after being caught with £1.6 million worth of cocaine in her suitcase.
The jail in Bali has an infamous reputation for overcrowding, with over 1,000 criminals crammed into a structure designed to house 357 people in 1979.
Several successful escape attempts have resulted from the confined and terrifying living circumstances.
Four years into Sandiford’s prison term, four inmates on death row escaped by burrowing a tunnel beneath the prison walls from a courtyard.
A similar incident occurred in 1999 when hundreds of convicts set fire to beds, overpowering guards who tried to put out the flames, resulting in a mass breakout.
Prisoners are known to bribe guards to bring them drugs or allow them out for brief trips.
Indonesia carries out executions infrequently with most prisoners waiting on death row for more than 10 years.
The last death penalty carried out in Indonesia took place in 2015 and 130 people, including Lindsay Sandiford, are waiting to be executed.
The punishment in Indonesia is brutal and the execution method is terrifying, as they are led out to a waiting firing squad.
Prisoners can choose to sit or stand before armed soldiers take their shots, aiming for the heart.
But if a prisoner survives the commander shoots them in the head.
It was as Sandiford arrived in Bali from Bangkok in Thailand on May 19, 2012 that she was arrested after the huge haul of cocaine was found in her luggage.
The gran insisted she had been forced to carry the Class A drugs by a criminal gang, who had threatened to hurt her family if she refused.
However, she dramatically changed her story when she was told she would receive the death penalty if she was convicted of drug trafficking.
Sandiford’s legal team argued that she had been pressured into carrying the drugs and had suffered with mental health problems.
Their pleas fell on deaf ears and she was convicted – although even the prosecution pleaded for her to be jailed for 15 years rather than sentenced to death.
