Indonesia | Lindsay Sandiford released from death row in Bali

The British national, 69, could be free to return home following an agreement between Indonesia and the UK

A British grandmother who was facing a death sentence in Bali for smuggling a large haul of cocaine into the island will be freed, more than a decade after her arrest.

Lindsay Sandiford, 69, is currently being held in the notorious Kerobokan prison, which holds around 1,000 inmates.

Sandiford, from Redcar in Teesside, could be free to return home as soon as Tuesday after an Indonesian government source told AFP that an agreement had been reached with the UK government.

Here is everything we know about Sandiford and why she was given a lengthy sentence.

Sandiford was arrested at Bali’s Denpasir National Airport in 2012 after customs officers discovered a haul of cocaine worth an estimated £1.6m in a hidden compartment of her suitcase when she arrived from Thailand.

The grandmother-of-two claimed that a British gang had forced her to smuggle the drugs - and threatened to kill one of her two sons if she refused to cooperate.

Sandiford was later found guilty of smuggling 4.8kg of cocaine hidden in the lining of her suitcase on a flight from Bangkok. Prosecutors sentenced her to death.

Police had accused her of being part of an international drug network that imported drugs from several countries including Peru, Colombia and Thailand.

Timeline of Lindsay Sandiford’s arrest and imprisonment

Early 2012 Lindsay Sandiford set up home in India, having moved from Gloucestershire, England.

17 May 2012 Sandiford allegedly met two members of a drug syndicate in Bangkok, Thailand and collected a suitcase packed with cocaine.

19 May 2012 Sandiford was arrested after cocaine was found in her luggage as she arrived into Bali from Bangkok. Police accuse her of being at the centre of a drugs rings involving three other Britons.

20 May 2012 Sandiford starts co-operating with police and gives them information about the drug syndicate. She insisted that she had been coerced into bringing cocaine to Bali.

22 January 2013 Sandiford is sentenced to death for smuggling 10.6lb of cocaine from Thailand. The prosecution had recommended 15 years imprisonment but a panel of judges sentenced her to death by firing squad.

29 January 2013 Julian Ponder is cleared of smuggling but convicted of possessing 23g of cocaine. He was one of the three Britons detained after Sandiford was arrested for smuggling cocaine.

31 January 2013 Sandiford loses her bid to get the UK government to fund a lawyer for her appeal against the death penalty.

15 February 2013 The British consulate in Bali submitted a statement to Sandiford’s appeal. A spokesperson for the FCDO said: “It continues to be the longstanding policy of the United Kingdom to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and we will do all we can to assist British nationals facing the death penalty.”

8 April 2013 Sandiford lost her first appeal against her death sentence. The appeal judges ruled that the original decision was “accurate and correct”.

30 August 2013 Sandiford loses her second appeal in Indonesia’s highest court. “The decision is unanimous”, said chief judge Artidjo Alkostar.

12 September 2015 Sandiford meets her granddaughter Ayla for the first time, MailOnline reported. The then-two-year-old girl was born seven months after Sandiford went to prison. She visited her grandmother in prison.

22 February 2019 Sandiford gave an interview to MailOnline from prison and said that “in spite of everything, I feel blessed.”

“I have been blessed to live long enough to see my two sons grow up into fine young men and blessed to have been able to meet my two grandchildren. A lot of people don’t get that in their lifetime,” she said.

18 May 2019 Sandiford’s fellow inmate, Heather Mack, tells The Mirror that Lindsay “spends all day pretty much alone in her cell and doesn’t mix so much with the other prisoners.”

“She snaps at me for no reason but I still make an effort with her. She has said she wants to die,” Mack added.

Heather Mack was jailed in 2015 for helping her boyfriend murder her mother. The pair wrapped her mother’s body in tape, stuffed it in a suitcase and tried to flee.

15 March, 2024: Human rights barrister Felicity Gerry KC, who visited Sandiford in 2015, called for her return to the UK. Gerry said the Indonesian government should be “taking active steps to facilitate her return to the UK, either to serve a sentence near her family or to consider her release.”

21 October, 2025: Sandiford, now aged 69, could be free to return home along w after an Indonesian government source told AFP that an agreement had been reached with the UK government.

The other foreign nationals imprisoned in Bali

Sandiford is not the only foreign national to be imprisoned and threatened with the death sentence in Indonesia. In 2005 a group of Australians, later called the Bali Nine, were arrested while attempting smuggle over 8kg of heroin from Bali.

The two ringleaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were executed in 2015, sparking diplomatic tensions and leading Australia to recall its ambassador in protest. 

Of the remaining members, the group’s sole woman, was released in 2018, while another member died of cancer the same year.

Five have since returned home to Australia, as Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens, Si Yi Chen, and Michael Czugaj returned home in December 2024.

"These Australians served more than 19 years in prison in Indonesia. It was time for them to come home," Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

Source: independent.co.uk, Holly Bancroft, Olivia Ireland, October 21, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde