The white sandy beaches of Nusa Kambangan belie the horrors played out on Indonesia’s “Execution Island”.
This is the remote spot where British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford will be executed if she fails to overturn her death penalty for drug smuggling. The Mirror boarded a traditional perahu fishing boat to visit the notorious isle where inmates are marched out and killed by firing squad.
It is the same journey Sandiford, 67, will make if and when the authorities decide to carry out her punishment. But for the convicted drugs mule there will be no return trip. Barring a reprieve, she will be taken from Bali’s infamous Kerobokan prison where she has spent 12 years for smuggling £1.6million of cocaine.
Lindsay Sandiford has spent 12 years in a Bali prison (AFP/Getty Images)And she will spend her final hours on the notorious island, which is also nicknamed the “Indonesian Alcatraz,” a fortress where the worst inmates are sequestered, imprisoned and executed. Nusa Kambangan has four active prisons, holding more than 2,000 of the country’s worst offenders.
Some campaigners believe the island is a symbol of the death penalty’s brutality and the authorities have attracted criticism globally for refusing to axe the feudal punishment. Last night, world-renowned human rights barrister Dr Felicity Gerry KC repeated calls for Sandiford to be returned to the UK.
'I ventured into Alcatraz after dark and was terrified by what I saw and heard'
Nusa Kambangan has four active prisons, holding more than 2,000 of the country’s worst offenders (AFP via Getty Images)In 2015, the Briton helped stop the execution of Mary Jane Veloso, an impoverished Filipina maid recruited to work in Indonesia and carry luggage loaded with 2.6kg of heroin.
Dr Gerry, who visited Sandiford in prison in 2015,said: “The death penalty, particularly for women caught up in the drug trade, should be abolished. The [British] Government should be taking active steps to facilitate Lindsay’s return to the UK, either to serve a sentence near her family or to consider her release.” Our visit to the island comes just days after it emerged Sandiford was hoping a law change could set her free.
A view inside the Kerobokan prison shows the aftermath of a fire (AFP via Getty Images)Prison insiders claimed British consulate officials had stepped up visits to see Sandiford after an Indonesian criminal code was passed by the Government. Among a raft of changes is new legislation that would mean her death sentence could be converted into a life prison term as she has managed more than 10 years’ good behaviour.
Lawyers could then argue she should be returned to the UK, where she is likely to go free on the basis of time served in Indonesia. We made the 15-minute crossing from Calicap on the Indonesian mainland to visit the prison.
British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford has been teaching cons at Kerobokan Prison to knit (Humphrey Nemar /daily mirror)This could be Sandiford’s final destination after she is frogmarched from her Bali cell in the dead of night and flown to Yogyakarta. From there she will take a five-hour journey through Central Java and will board a Government vessel to the island. As Sandiford is taken by boat into restricted waters, she will get her first glimpse of the notorious jail, which is inhabited by drug dealers, murderers and political opposition figures.
When the day of reckoning arrives, Sandiford, her hands and feet shackled, will be taken from her cell at midnight. The carefully choreographed execution is identical every time. She will walk deep into the woods into a “death zone” known as Nirbaya, about two miles up a winding dirt track.
The Indonesian prison system is notorious (AFP via Getty Images)Sandiford will be offered a blindfold. She will wear a white apron and have a red target on her chest.She will be asked if she has any final requests, then will be lined up in front of a group of marksmen – only three with live ammunition – and shot dead. Executioners aim for the heart but if the prisoner survives, reports claim “the commander will shoot her point blank in the head”.
Despite the barbarity, Sandiford, a former legal secretary from of Redcar, North Yorks, has previously said she does not fear the firing squad. She said in 2019: “It won’t be a hard thing for me to face any more. It’s not particularly a death I would choose but then again I wouldn’t choose dying in agony from cancer either.
Lindsay Sandiford being escorted by armed customs personnel (AFP via Getty Images)
Lindsay Sandiford is facing a death sentence (PA)“I do feel I can cope with it. But when it happens I don’t want my family to come. I don’t want any fuss at all. The one thing certain about life is no one gets out alive.”
She went on: “Dying doesn’t bother me. I never thought I’d last this long to be honest. What I am uncomfortable about is the public humiliation. You’re dragged halfway around the country and paraded in front of the press before being executed and that will be the worst thing for me.
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“My attitude is, ‘If you want to shoot me, shoot me. Get on with it’. I’ve done a terrible thing, I know, but the worst thing is the ritual public humiliation they seem to enjoy.”
Our reporter Dan Warburton on his way to 'Execution Island' (Humphrey Nemar /daily mirror)Sandiford is believed to have been close friends with Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran of the Bali Nine drug trafficking gang who were taken from Kerobokan and executed in 2015. The last executions in Indonesia were carried out in July 2016 when three Nigerians and one Indonesian convicted of drug offences were shot.
But Indonesian authorities are resolute about executing foreigners regardless of the diplomatic fallout. In 2015, the soon to be outgoing President Joko Widodo declared: “I will say this firmly: Don’t interfere with the executions, because it is our sovereign right to exercise our laws.”
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