Renae Lawrence has asked for a special Hindu ceremony as a final request before the Bali Nine drug smuggler is released from jail and returns to Australia.
The 41-year-old asked jail authorities to have the special ceremony in the prison’s Hindu temple.
Bangli Jail prisoner service section head Jaya Sentana told The Daily Telegraph Lawrence wanted the ceremony to express thanks to the jail.
‘It is conducted as she wants to express her thanks as she believes that she has been protected (spiritually) during her time living here.’
Renae Lawrence (pictured) has asked for a special Hindu ceremony as a final request before the Bali Nine drug smuggler is released from jail and returned to Australia
The 41-year-old asked jail authorities to have the special ceremony in the prison’s Hindu temple
Lawrence has been behind bars since she was convicted of attempting to smuggle 2.6kg of heroin into Australia through Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport on April 17, 2005.
She has used the more than 12 years she’s spent in various Indonesian prisons to learn to speak and read the local language, and she currently follows the Hindu religion.
Jail governor Made Suwendra said he believed the inmate had yet to undergo the conversion ceremony
The Bali Nine drug mule will be freed from prison next Wednesday and have only served 13 years and seven months of her 20-year jail term.
Twice-yearly remissions for good behaviour bumped down the length of her jail sentence.
Lawrence will be collected from jail on Wednesday before immigration officers escort her to the airport to be deported to Australia.
While Lawrence has engaged in self-healing programs in prison, jail authorities also revealed she takes anti-depressants.
Bangli Jail prisoner service section head Jaya Sentana told The Daily Telegraph Lawrence wanted the ceremony to express thanks to the jail
Renae Lawrence has used the more than 12 years she’s spent in various Indonesian prisons to learn to speak and read the local language, and she currently follows the Hindu religion
The Bali Nine drug mule will be freed from prison next Wednesday and have only served 13 years and seven months of her 20-year jail term
Mr Suwendra said Lawrence had received a signed letter from the jail’s medical clinic to continue to be prescribed Xanax when she arrived back in Australia.
‘As she is undergoing therapy she needs a recommendation letter of some medicine that is left, as she would bring it home,’ he said.
Jail doctor Gusti Putu Sumertayasa said Lawrence had been on the medication since her stint at Kerobokan jail.
Her dosage has been reduced to 1mg twice a day since she was transferred to Bandli jail in 2014.
‘She has been much better when she entered this jail. Earlier, she had many medicines, but now it is only left Aprazolam or Xanax.’
Mr Suwendra said Lawrence had received a signed letter from the jail’s medical clinic to continue to be prescribed Xanax when she arrived back in Australia
Lawrence will be the first of the Bali Nine to taste freedom
The doctor also said Lawrence had also used methadone in the past, but had been weened off it.
Lawrence will be the first of the Bali Nine to taste freedom.
Members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed at the hands of the firing squad in 2015, and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died of cancer earlier this year.
The five remaining survivors will serve their life sentences with their only hope of getting a reduced sentence resting on the shoulders of Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Though, each year their applications are rejected.