Inside hellish Bail jail where drug-smuggling grandmother awaits death
Inside hellish Indonesian jail where drug-smuggling British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford, 64, is waiting to be executed by firing squad after being caught with £1.6m of cocaine in her suitcase
- She was caught flying into Bali from Bangkok with 10.16lb of cocaine in 2012
- The Brit has spent ten years on Death Row in grim Kerobokan prison
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Inside a hellish Bali prison is a dug-smuggling British grandmother who is to be executed by a firing squad after she was caught with £1.6million of cocaine in her suitcase.
Lindsay Sandiford, 64, is awaiting the date of her execution in one of the toughest prisons in Indonesia and the site of many deadly riots, known ironically as Hotel K.
The grandmother-of-two was locked up in Kerobokan Prison in 2013 after she was found with £1.6million of cocaine stashed in her suitcase.
Drug mule Sandiford who was caught flying into Bali from Bangkok with 10.16 lb of cocaine in 2012 has now spent 10 years on Death Row.
Smugglers face severe penalties in the country as around 80% of the prison’s population are locked up on drug charges waiting to be executed, according to the Mirror.
Lindsay Sandiford, is to be executed by a firing squad after she was caught with £1.6million of cocaine in her suitcase in 2012
The 62-year-old, from Yorkshire, has been held on Death Row for ten years at Bali’s grim Kerobokan prison known ironically as Hotel K (pictured)
She is awaiting the date of her execution in one of the toughest prisons in Indonesia and the site of many deadly riots, known ironically as Hotel K
The Brit, from Yorkshire, who has no previous convictions, 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.
She received a death sentence despite cooperating with police in a sting to arrest people higher up in the syndicate, sparking an outcry from human rights lawyers and former UK Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald who said she had been treated with ‘quite extraordinary severity’.
She will be transferred to Nusa Kambangan – known as Execution Island – and shot by firing squad at midnight with up to a dozen other condemned prisoners when and if her death penalty is carried out
The British government has repeatedly refused to fund Sandiford’s appeal, despite a ruling from Supreme Court judges in London who said ‘substantial mitigating factors’ had been overlooked in her original trial.
The syndicate’s alleged ringleader Julian Ponder, 50, from Brighton, was freed from Kerobokan prison in late 2017 following rumours more than £1 million in bribes were paid to drop trafficking charges against Ponder, his former partner Rachel Dougall, and fellow Brit Paul Beales. Dougall served one year and Beales four years for involvement in the conspiracy.
Sandiford could face execution at any time after failing to lodge a final appeal but said: ‘I really cannot face asking anyone for help or having to deal with another lawyer. I just can’t face it. I’ve been burnt enough times.
‘I’ve had 10 different lawyers. If I actually turned my mind to the legal process I would get angry and bitter and it would be destructive.’
Sandiford said she did not want the help of the Foreign Office after the crushing fiasco of Harahap’s seedy liaisons with Ponder. ‘If they started getting involved, they would probably end up getting me shot even sooner,’ she said.
Now grey-haired and suffering arthritis, Sandiford spends her days knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell she shares with four other women prisoners, most of them poorly-educated local women convicted of drug offences
Julian Ponder, 50, from Brighton (pictured) was the alleged ringleader of the drug smuggling syndicate that Sandiford was involved in but he was freed from Kerobokan prison in late 2017
Sandiford (pictured left with her eldest son and right in her younger days) will be transferred to Nusa Kambangan – known as Execution Island – and shot by firing squad at midnight with up to a dozen other condemned prisoners when and if her death penalty is carried out
Sandiford met one of her granddaughters (pictured) while in prison awaiting her fate
Her last contact with British officials was a letter from the holiday island’s new British Vice Consul John Makin in October 2016 asking her to contact him if she wanted any assistance. Sandiford did not reply.
Now grey-haired and suffering arthritis, Sandiford spends days at a time knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell prison she shares with four other women prisoners, most of them poorly-educated local women convicted of drug offences.
The grandmother’s final wish in life is to just die as she battles it out in the grotesquely overpopulated jail.
The prison houses 1,300 inmates – four times the amount of people the prison was built for in 1979 – and has previously been described by inmates as a ‘hellhole’ with frequent ‘murders, rapes, drug overdoses and bashings’.
Prisoners move a metal fence inside the Kerobokan prison where it is said to be rife with drugs and crime
The prison houses 1,300 inmates – four times the amount of people the prison was built for in 1979
It has previously been described by inmates as a ‘hellhole’ with frequent ‘murders, rapes, drug overdoses and bashings’
Inmates could be seen vying for space inside the crowded prison
The prison houses 1,300 inmates – four times the amount of people the prison was built for
Despite the immense number of inmates waiting to serve their death penalty for drug smuggling, the last time the prison carried out a death penalty was in 2015
Prisoners have a choice to sit or stand when armed officers take their shots aimed at the heart
Announcements and sirens on loudspeakers scream every day and inmates are constantly vying for space in the crowded cells.
Rachel Dougall, who was sentenced to a year in the squalid prison for failing to report a crime, told Daily Mail Australia in March, 2017, she suffered a nervous breakdown while inside after being locked up with drug addicts, HIV-positive inmates and sexually aggressive lesbians.
‘Most of the women were on drugs virtually every day. If you had money the guards would get you anything you wanted,’ she said.
‘Inmates in the men’s prison next door even paid prostitutes for overnight visits.’
She claimed she was locked up with drug addicts, HIV-positive inmates and sexually aggressive lesbians.
She also said she was beaten several times before she was released in May 2013.
Other inmates have claimed the lock-up is filled with crime and drugs.
Because of the squalled conditions many people have successfully escaped the ‘hellhole’ as four escaped in 2017 by digging a tunnel under the walls from a courtyard.
Despite the immense number of inmates waiting to serve their death penalty for drug smuggling, the last time the prison carried out a death penalty was in 2015.
Prisoners have a choice to sit or stand when armed officers take their shots aimed at the heart. In the event that a prisoner survives a commander will shoot them in the head.
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