Filipino woman on Indonesia death row recalls a stunning last minute reprieve and 'miracle' transfer

YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Filipino death row inmate Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso knelt to pray when officers came to take her to an execution site in May 2015, just a few feet away from her isolation cell on an Indonesian prison island, where a 13-member firing squad was waiting.

While she prayed, the Philippines government was wrapping up a lengthy legal battle over her fate. Veloso's life was ultimately spared — temporarily — by Indonesia's Attorney General's Office, which issued a stay of execution shortly before Veloso was to be executed with eight other death row inmates.

''Lord, many people there believe that I am guilty, but many people out there believe that I am innocent. Lord, You are the One who knows everything, You knew that I am innocent, so I beg You, please prove that by saving me,'' Veloso recalled praying in a tearful interview with The Associated Press at a female prison in Yogyakarta on Tuesday.

Duped into becoming a drug courier

The reprieve aimed to provide an opportunity for Veloso's testimony to expose how a criminal syndicate duped her into being an unwitting accomplice and courier in drug trafficking.

Shock washed over Veloso as a group of officials from the attorney general's office informed her of the stay just as she was being led out to the execution site on Nusakambangan prison island. In tears, she remembered a cocoon she saw the previous night hanging from a tree branch near her cell.

''In the Philippines we believe that if there is a cocoon, there will be a new life,'' Veloso said. ''That means I will not be executed because God will give me a new life.''

Veloso, now 39, was arrested in 2010 at the airport in the Indonesian ancient city of Yogyakarta, where officials discovered about 2.6 kilograms (5.7 pounds) of heroin hidden in her luggage. The single mother of two sons was convicted and sentenced to death.

Veloso has maintained her innocence throughout her 14 years of incarceration. She has spent her time in prison designing Indonesian batik clothing, painting, tailoring and learning interior design and other skills.

Veloso was granted a stay of execution because her alleged boss was arrested in the Philippines, and the authorities there requested Indonesian assistance in pursuing a case against her. The woman, who allegedly recruited Veloso to work in Kuala Lumpur, Maria Kristina Sergio, surrendered to police in the Philippines just two days ahead of her scheduled execution.

The dramatic turn of events began last month, when in an unusual last-ditch effort to delay Veloso's death, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that a deal had been reached for Indonesia to send Veloso home after a decade of pleading from Manila.

''Mary Jane Veloso is coming home,'' Marcos said in a statement. ''Arrested in 2010 on drug trafficking charges and sentenced to death, Mary Jane's case has been a long and difficult journey.''

A practical arrangement

A ''practical arrangement'' between Indonesia and the Philippines was signed on Dec. 6, to send Veloso home, which is expected before Christmas.

Although there is no treaty between the countries, Indonesia and the Philippines are both members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the transfer of convicts in the ASEAN region is in accordance with the bloc's Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, said Raul Vasquez, the undersecretary at the Department of Justice of the Philippines, after the signing ceremony.

Indonesia's Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesia's coordinating minister for law, human rights, immigration and corrections, lauded the transfer agreement as a ''historic milestone'' between Indonesia and the Philippines, and part of the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto's ''good neighbor'' policy.

Once repatriated, Mahendra said, if the Philippines want to pardon Veloso or grant clemency, ''that is entirely their authority in which we must also respect,'' the minister added. The Philippines, Asia's largest Roman Catholic nation, has abolished the death penalty.

‘Like a miracle'

Veloso described the decision as being ''like a miracle when I have lost all hope."

''For almost 15 years I was separated from my children and parents, and I could not see my children grow up,'' she said, her eyes filled with tears. ''I wish to be given an opportunity to take care of my children and to be close to my parents.''

Born in Cabanatuan, a city in Nueva Ecija province, Veloso was the youngest of five siblings of a family who lived in extreme poverty. Her father worked as a seasonal agricultural worker on a sugar cane plantation and her mother collected discarded bottles and plastic to sell to junk shops. Veloso dropped out of school in her first year of high school and married her husband when she was just 16 years old.

The couple later separated and she became a single mother to two young sons, forcing her to emigrate to Dubai in 2009 to work as maid. She returned to the Philippines before the end of her two-year contract after an attempted rape by her employer. A year later, Veloso was recruited by Sergio to be employed as a domestic servant in Malaysia but later was shifted to Indonesia.

Major drug smuggling hub

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.

Indonesia's last executions were carried out in July 2016, when an Indonesian and three foreigners were shot by firing squad.

There are about 530 people on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections' data showed as of last month. The Indonesian government recently agreed in principle to return five Australian nationals and a French national to their home countries.

''I was not a good Catholic before, and prison has changed my life into a skilled person who has become closer to God,'' Veloso said. ''I am ready to build a new life, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.''

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Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.