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

Comments

Kansas AG urges governor to deny clemency to 8 sentenced to death

TOPEKA — Attorney General Kris Kobach on Tuesday urged the governor to deny clemency to Kansas inmates who have been sentenced to death. Eight of nine people sentenced to death in Kansas formally filed clemency requests in May, according to a press release from the Attorney General’s Office. Kobach urged Gov. Laura Kelly to reject them.

Alabama | Judge bars nitrogen gas execution, says method is unconstitutionally cruel

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama from executing an inmate with nitrogen gas after declaring it violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks issued the ruling hours after an appeals court reversed her initial finding that the method was constitutional. Marks permanently enjoined the state from executing Jeffrey Lee, 49, by nitrogen gas. He was scheduled to be executed Thursday. The decision, for now, blocks the use of the controversial new execution method that the state has championed since 2024, but the issue will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Idaho will soon turn to firing squad executions. Police will pull the triggers

Trained members of Idaho law enforcement with demonstrated firearms proficiency are expected to fill slots for carrying out the death penalty by firing squad as the state prison system transitions to the controversial execution method next month. Six volunteers certified for no less than three years apiece through Peace Officer Standards and Training, or POST, will be recruited to ensure the Idaho Department of Correction is ready to comply with a state law that prioritizes shooting prisoners to death over lethal injection starting July 1. No one on the team may have faced disciplinary action over firearms, use of force, or related conduct over the prior year, according to new execution protocols the prison system released this week.

SCOTUS: Alabama can’t execute Jeffery Lee by nitrogen; Thursday execution called off

After a week of legal volleyball, Alabama death row inmate Jeffery Lee’s execution—scheduled for Thursday evening—was called off after federal courts called the state’s nitrogen gas execution method “likely unconstitutional.” The state took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping Lee could still be put to death tonight. In an order issued at 8:10 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that it would not lift a ban on Alabama executing Lee via nitrogen . In a short court order, the justices denied Alabama’s motion to go ahead with the execution. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the appeal and let the execution proceed, according to the order.

US | Army lays groundwork for death row executions if Trump gives approval

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

With nitrogen gas blocked, Alabama seeks to execute inmate by lethal injection

Jeffery Lee, who successfully challenged his scheduled Thursday execution by nitrogen gas, argued that execution by firing squad would be less painful. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office Friday sought to put an Alabama death row inmate to death by lethal injection a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed the state’s attempt to execute him by nitrogen gas. In a filing with the Alabama Supreme Court Friday afternoon, the state sought an expedited motion to set a new execution date for Jeffery Lee, 49. The state said that with a permanent injunction in place against nitrogen gas, the method by which the state intended to execute Lee on Thursday, it could execute him by lethal injection or the electric chair.

Texas | Tanner Horner now incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner has now taken up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury last month. Horner is incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state's death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison on May 5 within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a Christmas gift to her home in November 2022.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Texas | Death Row Inmate Gets Resentenced to Life

Harris County district judge recommends compassionate release for Clarence Jordan A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released. Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog