Manila, Nov 20 (IANS) Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos said on Wednesday that Indonesia has agreed to repatriate a convicted Filipino woman who has been sentenced to death for drug smuggling.
Marcos said that the Filipino convict, Mary Jane Veloso, will soon return to the Philippines after 14 years of languishing in Indonesian jail, and that she will remain in prison in the Philippines.
“After over a decade of diplomacy and consultations with the Indonesian government, we managed to delay her execution long enough to reach an agreement to finally bring her back to the Philippines,” Marcos said in a social media post.
Manila had consistently appealed to Jakarta for Veloso’s pardon, commutation of sentence and extradition, so she could serve her sentence in the Philippines, Xinhua news agency reported.
Veloso was arrested in Indonesia’s Yogyakarta in 2010 after she was caught carrying a suitcase containing over 2.6 kg of heroin. An Indonesian court meted Veloso a death sentence in the same year.
–IANS
as/