A British grandmother sentenced to death for smuggling drugs into Bali has abandoned her legal battle to escape execution and says she is now reconciled with the prospect of facing the firing squad.
In an astonishingly frank interview on Death Row, 62-year-old Lindsay Sandiford – whose two young granddaughters have flown from the UK to visit her in prison – said had decided to give up her attempts to lodge a potentially life-saving final appeal.
Drug mule Sandiford who was caught flying into Bali from Bangkok with 10.16 lb of cocaine in 2012 has now spent six years on Death Row while three Britons believed to be higher up the smuggling syndicate received sentences of one to six years and have all left prison.
But speaking in Bali's grim Kerobokan prison known ironically as Hotel K, Sandiford – who spends her days knitting clothes and toys for her grandchildren, charities, and church groups – insisted to Mail Online: 'In spite of everything, I feel blessed.
'I have been blessed to live long enough to see my two sons grow up into fine young men and blessed to have been able to meet my two grandchildren. A lot of people don't get that in their lifetime.'
Brit grandmother Lindsay Sandiford (pictured), sentenced to death for smuggling drugs into Bali has abandoned her legal battle to escape execution and says she is now reconciled with the prospect of facing the firing squad
Sandiford, 62, from Yorkshire, a grandmother-of-two young girls, has been held on Death Row for six years at Bali's grim Kerobokan prison known ironically as Hotel K (pictured)
Inside Kerobokan prison (pictured) in Bali, Sandiford spends her days knitting cuddly toys for church groups and charities. She says she gets on with the guards and stays out of trouble
Asked whether she feared execution by firing squad, she insisted: 'It won't be a hard thing for me to face anymore. It's not particularly a death I would choose but them again I wouldn't choose dying in agony from cancer either.
'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.'
Sandiford, from Yorkshire, who has no previous convictions, was sentenced to death in 2013 after claiming in court 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.
Sandiford was caught flying into Bali from Bangkok with 10.16lb of cocaine in 2012
She received a death sentence despite co-operating 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'.
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.
Ponder, who served just six years after being convicted of a reduced charge of cocaine possession, now flits between luxury hotels in Malaysia and Thailand with a 23-year-old Indonesian bride called Nadya, a convicted fraudster he met while in Kerobokan.
He declined to comment when traced to a hotel in Kuala Lumpur by Mail Online but is said to have told friends he hopes Sandiford is spared execution, saying: 'Lying awake every night for so many years thinking you could be taken away and executed at any time is already punishment enough.'
More than £40,000 raised by well-wishers for a final appeal against Sandiford's death penalty has been stolen by a succession of Indonesian lawyers and legal assistants and she said she had decided not to engage another lawyer to fight her sentence.
Despite her desperate plight, Sandiford has had no contact or assistance from British consular officials after falling out with the previous Vice Consul Alys Harahap who, incredibly, was sacked for conducting an illicit romance with Ponder while he was in Kerobokan jail.
The grandmother is facing death by firing squad while three Britons believed to be higher up the smuggling syndicate received sentences of one to six years and have all left prison
Despite the prospect of being shot, Sandiford says she feels blessed to have lived long enough to have seen her sons grow into 'fine young men' and met her granddaughters (one pictured)
Now grey-haired and suffering arthritis, Sandiford spends her days knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell at Kerobokan prison (pictured) she shares with four other women prisoners, most of them poorly-educated local women convicted of drug offences
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. I've had one steal all my money. 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 to 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.
Her last contact from 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.
She has difficulty walking, hobbling into the stiflingly hot open air visiting area for our one-hour meeting, but was in remarkably good spirits, laughing as she joked about her life in the notorious prison and her fellow inmates.
She said she had come to terms with her death sentence after forging a close relationship by phone and by visits from her two sons' daughters aged six and one – both of whom were born after Sandiford's arrest.
'If I was to die tomorrow, I would be happy I have had that relationship with them,' she said. 'It is the most important thing in my life.
'Of course I think about being executed. Who wouldn't? But what keeps me going is the fact I have seen my boys become men
