Yahoo – AFP,
May 4, 2015
London (AFP) - A British grandmother on death row in Indonesia is writing goodbye letters to her family and believes she could be executed at any time, she wrote in an article on Sunday.
British grandmother prepares for execution in Indonesia |
London (AFP) - A British grandmother on death row in Indonesia is writing goodbye letters to her family and believes she could be executed at any time, she wrote in an article on Sunday.
Lindsay
Sandiford, 58, said she was expecting to die shortly, after seven foreign drug
convicts were executed last week, causing a storm of international protest.
"My
execution is imminent and I know I might die at any time now. I could be taken
tomorrow from my cell," Sandiford wrote in British newspaper the Mail on
Sunday.
"I
have started to write goodbye letters to members of my family."
Sandiford,
originally from Redcar in northeast England, wrote that she planned to sing the
cheery popular song "Magic Moments" when facing the firing squad.
"I
won't wear a blindfold. It's not because I'm brave but because I don't want to
hide -- I want them to look at me when they shoot me."
She said
her greatest sadness is that she may never meet her two-year-old granddaughter,
who was born after her arrest.
Sandiford
was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of
trafficking drugs.
Customs
officers found cocaine worth an estimated £1.6 million ($2.4 million, 2.2
million euros) hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford's suitcase when she
arrived in Bali on a flight from Thailand in 2012.
Sandiford
admitted the offences, but says that she agreed to carry the drugs after a drug
syndicate threatened to kill her son.
She
described Andrew Chan, 31, one of two Australians killed by firing squad on
Wednesday for his role in a plan to smuggle heroin, as "one of the heroes
of my life".
The two had
become close friends in prison, where Chan had spent a decade after being
arrested as one of the so-called "Bali Nine" group of smugglers.
The
execution of Chan, who became a Christian pastor in prison, and another
Australian Myuran Sukumaran, 34, cast a pall over relations between Australia
and Indonesia.
A mentally
ill Brazilian man and four African men were also executed. A Filipina single
mother, Mary Jane Veloso, was granted a last-minute reprieve.
Sandiford's
family have recently launched a fundraising drive to raise money to lodge an
appeal at the Indonesian Supreme Court, after the British government refused to
fund the legal fight.
If the
challenge fails, Sandiford still has the option to appeal for clemency from
Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Mercy pleas
of the convicts executed on Wednesday had been rejected.
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