A Filipina who has spent almost 15 years on Indonesia’s death row was tearfully reunited with family members Wednesday after landing in Manila, where she is currently awaiting a hoped-for pardon in a women’s prison. Mary Jane Veloso, a mother of two, arrived before daybreak and was immediately transported to prison following a decade-long repatriation agreement between the two countries.
Although she is still technically serving a life sentence, President Ferdinand Marcos now decides how long she will be imprisoned. The 39-year-old was arrested and condemned to death in 2010 after the luggage she was carrying was discovered to be lined with 2.6 kilos (5.7 pounds) of heroin, sparking outrage in the Philippines.
Veloso wept as she hugged one of her boys and her parents Wednesday inside the Correctional Institution for Women in Manila, where she is being held under the conditions of a transfer deal with Indonesia that eliminates the risk of execution.
She traveled home without handcuffs alongside Filipino correctional officials on an overnight commercial flight following a Jakarta ceremony commemorating “the end of a harrowing chapter in Veloso’s life,” according to a prisons bureau statement.
“I’m hoping our president (Ferdinand Marcos) would grant me clemency so I can return to my family. “I’d been in jail in Indonesia for 15 years for something I didn’t do,” Veloso told reporters after getting a medical test at the Manila prison.
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