British gran awaiting firing squad after decade in jail for smuggling £1.6 million in cocaine

A British woman, who has been on death row in Indonesia for around a decade, faces a firing squad as efforts to reduce her sentence have thus far failed.

Lindsay Sandiford was arrested in Bali on 19 May, 2012, with airport authorities finding a pricey package of cocaine stashed within her luggage.

The 65-year-old grandmother says she was forced to carry the drugs, worth around £1.6 million, by a criminal gang who had threatened her sons.

When told she would receive the death penalty if found guilty of drug trafficking, she then said she had been asked to carry the cocaine by a British antiques dealer living in Bali.

Even though prosecutors requested that the gran be jailed for 15 years, she was instead given the death penalty in 2013 and has been awaiting execution at the notorious Kerobokan prison ever since.

AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati

Sandiford has appealed against her sentence unsuccessfully and has now spent almost a decade in the prison, though she does not yet know her execution date.

If the death penalty is carried out it will be done by firing squad, but for now, Sandiford continues to be incarcerated in one of Indonesia's most notorious prisons.

Kerobokan prison is a high-security facility designed to house fewer than 400 inmates, but the actual number of prisoners there is closer to 1,000.

A majority of the prisoners there are incarcerated on drug charges and it has been the site of several riots, some of them resulting in deaths and escapes over the years.

In 2017, four foreign prisoners managed to escape by digging a tunnel under the walls of the prison, while almost 300 inmates escaped following an incident in 1999 having set fire to their mattresses and got past the guards sent in to douse the flames.

REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

However, the Brit may find some reprieve in the lack of executions that Indonesia has carried out in recent years.

Most prisoners sentenced to death wait for more than 10 years behind bars before their sentence is carried out and there are over 100 people who have been sentenced to death who are still awaiting execution.

There has not been news of Indonesia carrying out executions on prisoners sentenced to death since 2016, when four men convicted of drug offences were put to death.

The country has faced international outcry on multiple occasions for putting foreign nationals to death.

Indonesian prisoners are killed by firing squad, with soldiers aiming for the heart, and an officer waiting to deliver a headshot - if the prisoner does not die from the initial barrage of bullets.