Death row drugs mule Lindsay Sandiford had a heart-wrenching visit from her family in her hell-hole Bali prison as she prays for a reprieve, the Mirror can reveal.
The pensioner – who has spent more than 12 years awaiting execution for smuggling cocaine – is said to have shared “cuddles and kisses” with her grandchildren for the first time in years. A prison source said: “She was happy and all went well. She met her grandchildren. Normally, these visits are held away from the normal meeting area but still have walls and iron bars with one door.
“There’s always one or more guards who are stationed within earshot of the meeting. But she was allowed to hold her family and have cuddles and kisses.” Last month the Sunday Mirror revealed Sandiford is so convinced she will walk free after 12 years on death row that she is giving her clothes to other inmates.
The Brit cocaine trafficker, 67, thinks she can dodge the firing squad thanks to a change in the law in Indonesia. She has been held in Bali’s hellhole Kerobokan jail since 2013 for bringing £1.6million of cocaine into the country.
But Indonesia has recently freed other smugglers serving similar sentences as it relaxes its notoriously tough anti-drug laws. A source said: “For a long time Lindsay was resigned to her fate, but now she’s dreaming of freedom.
“Foreign Office officials have spent a lot of time visiting her in prison and they’re working hard to secure her freedom.”
New legislation means Sandiford’s death sentence could be converted into a life prison term as she has managed more than 10 years’ good behaviour behind bars. Five members of the notorious Bali Nine were freed in December despite being convicted of trying to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin out of Indonesia in April 2005.
And Filipino maid Mary Jane Veloso, 40, also tasted freedom for the first time in 15 years after she was found carrying 2.6kg (5.7lb) of heroin at Indonesia’s Yogyakarta airport.
Now prison insiders say Sandiford is praying for similar treatment and believes she will be spared a trip to Nusa Kambangan, known as “Execution Island”. Lawyers could then argue she should be returned to the UK, where she is likely to go free on the basis of time served in Indonesia.
Formal legal secretary Lindsay Sandiford, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, claimed she was forced by a UK-based drugs syndicate to smuggle cocaine from Thailand to Bali by threats to the life of one of her two sons in Britain. In 2015 she had a heart-wrenching visit from the two-year-old granddaughter she had never met. Little Ayla was born seven months after her grandmother’s arrest in May 2012.
They were united in a visiting room at Kerobokan prison alongside her son Lewis, Ayla’s father, for the first time. It came as she was told her name was on a list of ten drug traffickers scheduled to be shot in eight days’ time – a decision later reversed.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.
