A grandmother on death row in Bali for drug smuggling has hugged her grandchildren for the first time in years after they visited the hellhole prison where she is incarcerated.

Lindsay Sandiford, 67, has spent 12 years awaiting execution by firing squad at the notorious Kerobokan Prison, having been found attempting to smuggle £1.6 million of cocaine into the Indonesian island in the lining of her suitcase.

The Brit, from Yorkshire, who has no previous convictions, claimed 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.

She received a death sentence despite cooperating 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’.

But a recent change in Indonesian law has given fresh hope to Sandiford and her supporters that she could soon be released, with her sentence commuted to life in prison after spending ten years behind bars with good behaviour.

It is understood Sandiford’s family were recently allowed to visit her in prison, allowing her to have ‘cuddles and kisses’ for the first time in years.

A prison source told the Mirror: ‘She was happy and all went well.

‘Normally these visits are held away from the normal meeting area but still have walls and iron bars with one door.

Lindsay Sandiford, 67, has spent 12 years awaiting execution by firing squad at the notorious Kerobokan Prison in Indonesia

Lindsay Sandiford, 67, has spent 12 years awaiting execution by firing squad at the notorious Kerobokan Prison in Indonesia

The Brit, from Yorkshire, who has no previous convictions, claimed she was forced by a UK-based drugs syndicate to smuggle cocaine from Thailand to Bali

The Brit, from Yorkshire, who has no previous convictions, claimed she was forced by a UK-based drugs syndicate to smuggle cocaine from Thailand to Bali

‘There’s always one or more guards who are stationed within earshot. But she was allowed to hold her family and have cuddles and kisses’.

It comes a decade after Sandiford had a visit from a granddaughter she had never met, who was born some seven months after her arrest in May 2012.

At the time of the visit she had been told she was due to be executed within eight days – but this decision was later reversed. 

After she was caught by authorities, Sandiford cooperated with police and assisted in the apprehension of several individuals higher up the drug syndicate. 

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.

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. 

The prison houses 1,300 inmates – four times the amount of people the prison was built for in 1979 – and has previously been described by inmates as a ‘hellhole’ with frequent ‘murders, rapes, drug overdoses and bashings’.

After she was caught by authorities, Sandiford cooperated with police and assisted in the apprehension of several individuals higher up the drug syndicate

After she was caught by authorities, Sandiford cooperated with police and assisted in the apprehension of several individuals higher up the drug syndicate

Now grey-haired and suffering arthritis, Sandiford spends days at a time knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell prison

Now grey-haired and suffering arthritis, Sandiford spends days at a time knitting in the cramped five metres-by-five-metres cell prison

Sandiford is jailed at the notorious Kerobokan Prison, having been found attempting to smuggle £1.6 million of cocaine into the Indonesian island in the lining of her suitcase

Sandiford is jailed at the notorious Kerobokan Prison, having been found attempting to smuggle £1.6 million of cocaine into the Indonesian island in the lining of her suitcase

One Indonesian woman imprisoned for corruption said last March that Sandiford was seen as the jail’s ‘queen’.

But recent law changes are said to have given Sandiford hope she would soon be released, leading to her giving away many of her clothes and possessions to other inmates.

It follows the release of five members of the Bali Nine, who were permitted to return to their homes in Australia in December, after being convicted of trying to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin into the country in 2005. 

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: ‘We are supporting a British woman detained in Bali and are in contact with the Indonesian authorities.’ 

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