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Drugs mule gran Lindsay Sandiford will board a flight home today with a £600 ticket after being spared the firing squad, the Mirror can reveal. The frail pensioner, 69, was given a UK-funded seat leaving Bali this afternoon. The legal secretary - handed the death penalty in 2013 - will have a short layover, before landing at London Heathrow Airport after a 20-hour journey. It marks the end of a harrowing chapter in legal secretary Sandiford's life, in which she has spent 13 years awaiting execution for smuggling £1.6million of cocaine into Indonesia. A source said: "Lindsay is extremely unwell. She is desperate to get home and to be with her family. More than a decade in one of the world's worst prisons has taken its toll on her and she wants nothing more than to get back to the UK." The Mirror understands Sandiford is scheduled to leave her cell in Kerobokan jail this afternoon alongside fellow UK national Shahab Shahabadi, 35, was detained in June 2014 and is serving a life sentence for drug offences. From there the pair will travel 45 minutes by car to Denpasar International Airport where they will finally be handed over to the UK Ambassador Dominic Jermey. The pair will be paraded in front of the media one last time, before boarding their flight flanked by British officials. Sandiford was sentenced to death in 2013 despite claiming a UK-based drug syndicate forced her to smuggle the drugs from Thailand. She has spent 13 years in Bali's notorious Kerobokan prison, where unsanitary conditions, overcrowding and humidity make life extremely harsh. But last month a bilateral agreement was struck between Indonesia and the UK Government to secure her release, with officials confirming she is "seriously ill". Sources in Indonesia say Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper made a personal plea to the Indonesian authorities for Sandiford's return. It is understood Foreign Office officials have been working on the deal for more than 18 months, making frequent visits to see her in prison. Pastor Christine Buckingham - who visited Sandiford in Kerobokan jail last week - told the Mirror: "She is in extremely ill health and she's very keen to get back and be with her family after these 13 years. She wants to get home and enjoy some creature comforts." Asked what she intends to do when she touches down in the UK, Ms Buckingham said: "We're deeply grateful to the Indonesian Government and of course the British Government for working this out together. We look forward to her getting home now. She's very unwell. The most important thing is that she gets home, we need her to be checked medically and then the plan is that she says she will spend as much time as she can with her family." Sandiford relocated to India in 2012 after being evicted from her rented home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. After arriving in Bali from Bangkok, Thailand, in May 2012, she was arrested with a haul of cocaine in her luggage. Sandiford maintained that she had been forced to carry the Class A drugs by a criminal gang, who had threatened her family if she didn't comply. But, the grandmother dramatically changed her story when she was told a conviction for drug trafficking would lead to the death penalty. She admitted to officers that she had been asked to transport the drugs by a British antiques dealer. Sandiford even agreed to take part in a police sting operation to catch her co-accused. Sandiford's legal team argued that she had been forced into transporting the drugs and was dealing with mental health problems. Their appeals were dismissed and she was found guilty - even though the prosecution had requested a 15-year prison sentence instead of the death penalty. Last year the Mirror revealed Sandiford was desperately hoping for her freedom after Indonesia relaxed their notoriously strict laws on drug trafficking. Indonesia hasn’t carried out any form of execution since 2016. And we revealed that while inside the hellish Kerobokan prison she earned the nickname "Grandmother" while teaching others to knit. Some sources said she enjoyed special privileges - including medium-rare steak dinners - while others described her as "foul-mouthed, antagonistic". She was forced to endure a life of pain after developing arthritis while locked away inside a cramped 16ft-by-16ft cell she shares with four other female prisoners.
