Crime
Lindsay Sandiford Loses Final Appeal Against Death Sentence in Bali
BALI– Lindsay Sandiford, a British grandmother sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Indonesia, now faces a firing squad after her final appeal was rejected by the country’s highest court.
Lindsay Sandiford’s only hope now is for clemency from the country’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has pardoned four drug dealers on death row since he came to power in 2004.
However, he has also made it clear that he routinely turns down most “almost all” such requests on behalf of foreign nationals, saying that Indonesians do not get such leniency.
Sandiford, 57, was arrested in May last year after cocaine valued at around £2.4 million (£1.6 million) was found during a routine check of her suitcase as she arrived on a flight into the holiday island of Bali. She had come in from Bangkok in Thailand, and was accused by police of being at the centre of a drug ring involving three other Britons.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel at the supreme court in Jakarta unanimously rejected her appeal. It backed an earlier decision, taken by the Denpasar district court in Bali, which sentenced her to death, and a separate ruling by the island’s high court, which rejected her first appeal.
“The decision is unanimous,” said the panel’s chief judge, Artidjo Alkostar, adding that there was “no dissenting opinion”.