YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Philippine death row inmate Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso knelt to pray when police came to take her to the execution ground in May 2015, just a few feet from her solitary cell on an Indonesian prison island, where a 13-member firing squad was waiting.
While he was praying, the Philippine government was wrapping up a long legal case about what would happen to him. Veloso’s life was spared – temporarily – by the Office of the Attorney General of Indonesia, which issued a death sentence shortly before Veloso was executed along 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 know everything, You know that I am innocent, so I ask you, please show me that by saving me,” Veloso remembers praying in an interview with The Associated Press at the women’s prison in Yogyakarta on Tuesday.
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Being tricked into being a drug carrier
The pardon was intended to provide an opportunity for Veloso’s testimony to reveal how the gang tricked him into becoming an unwitting accomplice and emissary in the drug trade.
Veloso was shocked when a group of officials from the office of the chief prosecutor told him about the place where he was going to be taken to the place where he would be executed on the island of Nusakambangan prison. Crying, he remembered the spider he saw the night before hanging from a tree branch near his cell.
“In the Philippines we believe that if there is a hole, there will be new life,” said Veloso. “This means that I will not be killed because God will give me a new life.”
Veloso, now 33, was arrested in 2010 at an airport in Indonesia’s ancient city of Yogyakarta, where officials found 2.6 kilograms of heroin hidden in his luggage. A single mother of two sons was convicted and sentenced to death.
Veloso remained innocent during his 14 years in prison. She spent her time in prison making Indonesian Batik clothing, painting, sewing and learning interior design and other skills.
Veloso was given the opportunity to be executed because his alleged boss was arrested in the Philippines, and the local authorities asked for Indonesian help to continue to prosecute him. The woman, who allegedly hired Veloso to work in Kuala Lumpur, Maria Kristina Sergio, surrendered to the police in the Philippines two days before she was killed.
The dramatic turn of events began last month, when in a rare attempt to delay Veloso’s death, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that an agreement had been reached for Indonesia to send Veloso home after 10 years of pleading from Manila.
“Mary Jane Veloso is coming home,” Marcos said in a statement. Arrested in 2010 for drug trafficking and sentenced to death, Mary Jane’s story has been a long and difficult journey.
The plan works
An “effective arrangement” between Indonesia and the Philippines was signed on December 6, to send Veloso home, which is expected before Christmas.
Although there is no agreement between these countries, Indonesia and the Philippines are both members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the transfer of detainees in the ASEAN region is in accordance with the Bloc Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, said Raul Vasquez, undersecretary. Philippine Department of Justice, after the signing ceremony.
Yusril Ihza Mahendra of Indonesia, Indonesia’s minister of law, human rights, immigration and rehabilitation, hailed the relocation agreement as a “historic event” between Indonesia and the Philippines, and part of the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto’s “good neighbor” policy.
Once they were repatriated, Mahendra said, if the Philippines wants to pardon Veloso or show mercy, “that is their power that we must respect,” added the minister. The Philippines, the largest Roman Catholic country in Asia, has abolished the death penalty.
‘Like a miracle’
Veloso described this move as “a miracle when I lost hope.”
“For almost 15 years I was separated from my children and parents, and I could not see my children growing up,” he said, his eyes filled with tears. “I wish to be given the opportunity to take care of my children and be close to my parents.”
Born in Cabanatuan, a city in the province of Nueva Ecija, Veloso was the youngest of five children in a family that lived in extreme poverty. His father worked as a farm laborer on a sugar cane field and his mother collected discarded plastic bottles to sell at junk shops. Veloso dropped out of school in her first year of high school and married her husband at the age of 16.
The couple eventually separated and she became a single mother to two young sons, forcing her to move to Dubai in 2009 to work as a maid. She returned to the Philippines before her two-year contract expired after being sexually assaulted by her employer. A year later, Veloso was hired by Sergio to work as a domestic worker in Malaysia but was later transferred to Indonesia.
A major hub for drug trafficking
The United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug trafficking hub despite having some of the strictest laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its youth.
The last execution in Indonesia took place in July 2016, when one Indonesian and three other foreigners were shot dead.
There are about 530 people on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners, data from the Department of Immigration and Corrections showed from last month. The Indonesian government recently agreed to repatriate five Australian nationals and a French national.
“I was not a good Catholic before, and the prison changed my life to become a skilled person who became closer to God,” said Veloso. “I’m ready to build a new life, like a butterfly emerging from its nest.”
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Joined by journalist Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, gave this statement.