Drug-trafficking British woman in Bali loses appeal against death sentence

Lindsay Sandiford was sentenced for trafficking cocaine with a street value of £1.6m on a flight from Thailand to Bali

The Guardian, Caroline Davies, Thursday 29 August 2013

Lindsay Sandiford inside a cell at a court in Denpasar, Bali. Photograph:
Sonny Tumbelaka/AFP/Getty Images

A British woman facing a firing squad for trafficking drugs into the Indonesian island of Bali has failed in her attempt to get her death sentence overturned, and now must fight for a judicial review or hope for a presidential pardon.

Lindsay Sandiford's appeal was unanimously rejected by three judges sitting in a closed hearing at the supreme court in Jakarta on Thursday.

The decision was reported in a text message by the chief judge, Artidjo Alkostar, which said: "Her appeal has been rejected. The decision is unanimous" and added there was "no dissenting opinion".

Sandiford, 57, a former legal secretary originally from Redcar, Teeside, was sentenced in May for trafficking nearly 4.8kg (10.6lb) of cocaine with a street value of £1.6m in her luggage on a flight from Thailand to Bali. Prosecutors said she was at the centre of a drug ring which involved three other Britons.

They had recommended she should serve 15 years in prison, but Denpasar district court handed down a death sentence. She appealed in the Indonesia high court and lost. That decision was upheld in Thursday's ruling. She must now apply for a judicial review from the same court. If that fails, her only hope is for clemency by president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Sandiford, a grandmother who has two sons aged 24 and 22, has insisted that she was a drug mule forced to transport the cocaine to protect her children. She is being held in Kerobokan jail, nicknamed Hotel K by inmates, where she shares a cramped cell with 12 other women, and is said to be in a state of deep depression.

Most people sentenced to death for drug offences in Indonesia fail to have their sentences reduced on appeal. They face a long wait in jail before being executed by firing squad. The country has one of the strictest drug policies in the world, with about 40 foreigners on death row convicted of drug crimes, according to a March 2012 report by Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Five foreigners have been executed since 1998, all for drug crimes, according to Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy. There have been no executions since 2008, when 10 people were put to death.

In 2011, Scott Rush, a member of an Australian drug smuggling gang known as the "Bali Nine", had his death sentence reduced to life after a judicial review.

Last year President Yudhoyono pardoned two Indonesians convicted of drug smuggling, reducing their death sentences to life in prison.

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