Indonesia has signed an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a seriously ill grandmother who has spent more than a decade on death row for drug trafficking, officials said on Tuesday.

Lindsay Sandiford, now in her late 60s, was sentenced to death in 2013 after she was convicted of smuggling cocaine worth an estimated $2.14 million into Bali. Customs officers discovered the drugs concealed in a false bottom in her suitcase upon her arrival from Thailand in 2012.

Sandiford admitted to the offence but claimed she was coerced by a drug syndicate that had threatened to kill her son. She lost an appeal against her death sentence in 2013.

Indonesia’s Minister of Law and Human Rights, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, said he had signed an agreement with British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper for the transfer of Sandiford and another British inmate, 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi, who is serving a life sentence for drug offences following his 2014 arrest.

“We agreed to grant the transfers of the prisoners to the UK. The agreement has been signed,” Yusril told reporters in Jakarta. He added that both inmates would be handed over once technical arrangements were finalised, likely within two weeks.

The minister said both prisoners were in poor health. Sandiford, he noted, had been examined by both Indonesian and British doctors and was found to be “seriously ill,” while Shahabadi suffers from “various serious illnesses, including mental health issues.”

Sandiford, identified by Indonesian authorities as 68 but publicly listed as 69, remains in Bali’s overcrowded Kerobokan Prison pending her transfer.

Indonesia enforces some of the world’s toughest drug laws. As of early November, more than 90 foreigners were on death row in the country, all for drug-related crimes.

Sandiford’s case drew intense media attention in the United Kingdom after her 2013 conviction. In a 2015 column published in The Mail on Sunday, she wrote of her fear of execution and revealed she had begun writing farewell letters to her family.

“My execution is imminent, and I know I might die at any time now. I could be taken tomorrow from my cell.” she wrote while in prison.

Sandiford, originally from Redcar in northeast England, had befriended Andrew Chan, one of the Australian “Bali Nine” members executed by firing squad in 2015.

Indonesia has repatriated several high-profile foreign inmates since President Prabowo Subianto took office in October 2024. These include Filipina Mary Jane Veloso, who was freed in December after nearly 15 years on death row, and French national Serge Atlaoui, released in February after 18 years.

The country last carried out executions in 2016, when one Indonesian and three Nigerian drug convicts were put to death. However, the government has recently indicated that it may resume executions in the near future.