The British grandmother who has spent the last 12 years on death row made a telling act in the ‘hope she will be released’.
Lindsay Sandiford was locked up in Bali’s Kerobokan Prison back in January 2013, sentenced to death by a firing squad.
Having been charged for smuggling drugs, she was able to hug her grandkids for the first time in over a decade this year as they visited her in Indonesia.
As well as being a literal grandmother, she has ended up earning the nickname ‘grandmother’ at the prison and is said to have taught some of her fellow inmates how to knit.
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Despite Sandiford having been sentenced to death, executions aren’t regularly carried out in Indonesia, and people have claimed she has become withdrawn in prison, losing hope of freedom.
Who is Lindsay Sandiford?
Now widely known as the ‘British grandmother on death row’, Sandiford was once a legal secretary.
In May 2012, she was arrested after arriving at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport from Bangkok, Thailand. The now 69-year-old was found with roughly 11 lb of cocaine in the lining of her suitcase, said to be worth £1.6 million.
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Sandiford claimed to police that she had been forced to smuggle the drugs by a criminal gang that had threatened her family.
However, in January 2013, she was eventually given a death sentence.
Lindsay Sandiford's chilling final wish
Heather Mack made acquaintances with Sandiford in prison while serving a 10-year sentence for the murder of her mother.
She claimed the grandmother was withdrawn and struggling with prison life, as she said in 2019: "She spends all day pretty much alone in her cell and doesn't mix so much with the other prisoners."
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And Mack added that Sandiford admitted 'she wants to die', with the Brit having reportedly said: "It won't be a hard thing for me to face anymore. I might not have chosen this kind of end, but then again, dying in agony from cancer isn't exactly appealing either.
"I do feel I can cope with it. But when it happens, I don't want my family to come. I don't want any fuss at all. The one thing certain about life is no one gets out alive."
The act she made in belief she'd be freed
Sandiford's friends have said that a change in Indonesia's law led her to believe she would be released.
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According to the Myanmar Accountability Project, capital punishment may be changed to a life prison term if the prisoner shows a 'commendable attitude and actions' during their ten-day probationary period.
The law was initially established in 2023, but came into effect this year.
A source claimed that she apparently reckoned that her death sentence may be changed to a life prison term thanks to her showing good behaviour for over a decade. And so, she gave away her stuff.
They said to The Mirror: "She's given away all her clothes and things she had because she was expecting to be released already. But it's understood she will be released in a few months, along with other Westerners.
"The new Indonesian president has, among his many changes, said he wants to reduce the numbers in jail.
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"Local people are being released, then overseas people are to be looked at. Already the Australian drug group known as the Bali Nine are back in Australia."
Inside Kerobokan prison
Kerobokan is one of Indonesia's most notorious prisons and was initially built to hold just over 350 inmates. But, as of 2017, the prison contains over 1,400 male and female prisoners from various countries.
A 2017 ABC report found that over 80 per cent of them are there on drug charges. One prisoner opened up to the outlet about the conditions he lived in, explaining there was no hot water and no real water pressure, so he had to rely on 'bucket showers'.
Another added that while his cell block was meant to house between 40 and 50 people, it was home to an 'overload' of 87.
He said: "It's not nice here, but we prisoners try to make the best of a bad situation."
Topics: Death Row, World News, UK News, Prison, Crime
Jess Battison