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Drugs mule gran Lindsay Sandiford will touch down on British soil after more than a decade on death row - but faces being locked up immediately. The frail pensioner, 69, was pictured in a wheelchair as she tasted freedom for the first time in 13 years after leaving Bali's notorious Kerobokan jail. Wearing a mask and covering her face from photographers, she was whisked away to Denpasar International Airport where she boarded a Qatar Airways flight this afternoon. The UK-funded £600 plane ticket bought her freedom after Keir Starmer struck a bilateral agreement with the Indonesian authorities for Sandiford's release. She is said to be in extremely poor health as she makes the 20-hour journey back to the UK. It marks the end of a harrowing chapter in legal secretary Sandiford's life, in which she was sentenced to the death penalty for smuggling £1.6million of cocaine into Indonesia. The Foreign Office has refused to say if Sandiford will walk free or be taken into custody when she arrives back in the UK. But when asked what Sandiford faces when she arrives back in Britain, Indonesia's Deputy Minister for Immigration and Correctional Coordination, I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram, said: “In England, she will remain in prison.” Sandiford left her cell in Kerobokan jail shortly after 2pm GMT. She was freed alongside fellow UK national Shahab Shahabadi, 35, who was detained in June 2014 and is serving a life sentence for different drug offences. The pair were paraded in front of the media one last time as officials signed repatriation papers at the prison. From there they travelled 45 minutes by car to Denpasar International Airport where they were handed over to UK officials and boarded a flight ahead of the 8,000-mile journey. It is the same airport where Sandiford was dressed in orange garbs in 2012 and paraded before the press with blocks of the Class A drugs piled on a table in front of her. The repatriation deal was signed by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on October 21 after months of talks, officials said. "This process demonstrates Indonesia's credibility in the international legal cooperation scheme," Mataram said. Indonesian authorities said Sandiford is suffering from diabetes and hypertension and needs medical attention on home soil. 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." 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. 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." 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. But her repeated 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. A spokesman for the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said: “We are supporting two British Nationals detained in Indonesia and are in close contact with the Indonesian authorities to discuss their return to the UK.”
