{"id":94916,"date":"2025-10-21T14:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/94916\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T14:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:41:11","slug":"british-grandmother-jailed-in-indonesia-for-drug-smuggling-to-return-to-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/94916\/","title":{"rendered":"British grandmother jailed in Indonesia for drug smuggling to return to UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dawn LimbuWest of England<\/p>\n

\"APAP<\/p>\n

Grandmother Lindsay Sandiford will be transferred to the UK after 12 years on death row in Indonesia<\/p>\n

A British grandmother who has spent more than a decade on death row in Indonesia after being convicted of drug smuggling can return to the UK, the Indonesian government has said.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Sandiford, 69, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after nearly five kilos of cocaine with a street value of \u00a31.6m were found in her suitcase when she arrived on a flight from Thailand in 2012.<\/p>\n

She admitted the offences but said she had agreed to carry the cocaine after a drug syndicate threatened to kill her son. <\/p>\n

An agreement between the Indonesian and British governments, announced on Tuesday, will allow her to return to the UK in about two weeks alongside British national Shahab Shahabadi.<\/p>\n

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting two British Nationals detained in Indonesia and are in close contact with the Indonesian authorities to discuss their return to the UK.”<\/p>\n

\"ReutersReuters<\/p>\n

Sandiford was convicted of drug trafficking in 2013<\/p>\n

Sandiford, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, had faced the threat of execution by firing squad during her sentence in Indonesia.<\/p>\n

Shahabadi, 35, had been serving a life sentence after being convicted of drug smuggling and both British prisoners are said to have been suffering from health problems.<\/p>\n

The Indonesian minister for law and human rights, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, said he had signed a deal with British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper for the transfer of the pair.<\/p>\n

“We agreed to grant the transfers of the prisoners to the UK. The agreement has been signed,” Mr Yusril told reporters at a press conference in capital Jakarta earlier.<\/p>\n

They will be handed over after the technical details of the transfer are agreed, which the minister said could take “around two weeks” to organise.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the press conference, Mr Yusril said both prisoners are “currently facing problems.”<\/p>\n

“The first one, Sandiford, is in poor health and has been examined by our doctors as well as by a doctor from the British consulate in Bali. She is seriously ill.<\/p>\n

“The second, Shahab Shahabadi, although still young at 35 and serving a life sentence, is suffering from several serious health issues, particularly mental health disorders.”<\/p>\n

Indonesia and the UK do not have a formal prisoner transfer arrangement; normally these require that repatriated prisoners serve out their terms in their home countries.<\/p>\n

Sandiford was arrested at a time when the Indonesian authorities were imposing tougher penalties on drug smugglers and in 2015 two Australian men were executed after being convicted of smuggling heroin.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Jonathan Head in Bangkok<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dawn LimbuWest of England AP Grandmother Lindsay Sandiford will be transferred to the UK after 12 years on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-94916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}