Definitely not worth the risk.
To be taken to a nearby orchard and shot. What’s worse though, getting shot early on, or incarcerated in an Indonesian prison for 15 years with a slight chance of making it out alive as a 71 year old? It’s a toss up here.
BREAKING NEWS: British grandmother, 56, is sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug trafficking after customs police in Bali found £1.6million worth of cocaine in her suitcase
- Lindsay Sandiford, 56, was stopped with cocaine worth £1.6m in suitcase
- She was arrested in May but said she had been coerced into carrying drugs
- Prosecutors had called for 15 year sentence but judges chose death penalty
By STEVE NOLAN and MARTIN ROBINSON
PUBLISHED: 06:37 GMT, 22 January 2013 | UPDATED: 07:55 GMT, 22 January 2013
In shock: This is the moment Briton Lindsay Sandiford heard that she would receive the death penalty for drug smuggling
A British grandmother has been sentenced to death for trying to smuggle almost 5kg of cocaine into Bali in her suitcase.
Lindsay Sandiford, from Gloucestershire, was arrested in May last year as she entered Indonesia on a flight from Thai capital Bangkok with £1.6million worth of the Class A drug.
State prosecutors had called for the 56-year-old housewife to be jailed for 15 years but there was a gasp in the Bali courtroom today when she was told she would be killed for her crime.
Sandiford slumped back stunned as the judges announced the shock verdict which, if carried out, will see her led into an orchard where she will be executed by firing squad.
She also wept and declined to speak to reporters on her way back to prison, covering her face with a scarf.
Mrs Sandiford had hoped she would be spared execution because of her age and for her co-operation with authorities on the holiday isle.
She had also claimed she was coerced into the crime because her children were threatened.
But in its verdict, a judge panel headed by Amser Simanjuntak concluded that Sandiford has damaged the image of Bali as a tourism destination and weakened the government’s fight against drugs.
‘We found no reason to lighten her sentence,’ he said.
She will appeal the ruling and her hopes of escaping the firing squad now depend on a series of appeals and, finally, with a plea for mercy to the President if all her legal channels become exhausted.
