British Woman Lindsay Sandiford Returns Home from Bali Death Row on Humanitarian Grounds

Two British drug convicts, including death row prisoner Lindsay Sandiford, were repatriated from Indonesia on Friday, as part of a deal to return them on humanitarian grounds. Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, but has moved to release more than half a dozen high-profile detainees in the last year. Sandiford, 69, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. She was repatriated along with Shahab Shahabadi, 36, who was serving a life sentence for drug offences after his arrest in 2014. Both left Bali on a Qatar Airways flight to London via Doha, an official from Indonesia’s law and human rights ministry confirmed to AFP on Friday. They had been presented before the media in a handover ceremony at Kerobokan jail a day earlier, with Sandiford covering her face. Their “detention will be moved to the United Kingdom” under the bilateral deal, the official, I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram, told reporters. Sandiford wound up behind bars after Indonesian customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated $2.14m hidden in a false bottom of her suitcase when she landed in Bali in 2012. Sandiford admitted to the offences but said she had agreed to carry the narcotics after a drug syndicate threatened to kill her son.