Filipinos narrowly escaped the death penalty by leaving Indonesia

A Filipino woman, who spent nearly 15 years on death row in Indonesia and was nearly shot, is finally home.

Mary Jane Veloso was sentenced to death in 2010 after being found carrying 2.6kg of heroin through an Indonesian airport.

But the 39-year-old mother of two always insisted that she was tricked into transporting drugs.

She flew back to Manila on Wednesday, after the two governments reached an agreement allowing her to return home.

“This is a new life for me and I will have a new start in the Philippines,” she said at a press conference, adding that she wanted to celebrate Christmas with her family.

“I have to go home because I have my family there, I have my children waiting for me.”

While the agreement stipulated that Veloso would return as a prisoner, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos could pardon her. She is currently detained at the main women’s prison in Metro Manila.

Veloso was arrested in April 2010 at Yogyakarta airport.

She said she was persuaded by the daughter of one of her sponsors to come to Indonesia to start a new job as a maid.

She claimed that her male friends gave her new clothes and a new bag that she did not know had heroin sewn into it.

She should have faced a firing squad in 2015, but Benigno Aquino III, president of the Philippines at the time, won a last-minute pardon after the woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested and put on trial for human trafficking. Veloso was named as a prosecution witness in that case.

Her pardon was so late that several newspapers in the Philippines published front pages and headlines reporting what had happened.

Ms. Veloso’s case has attracted widespread public sympathy in the Philippines, a country that does not have the death penalty.

Her situation is familiar to many people in the Philippines, where women often escape poverty by finding work as domestic workers abroad.

“I brought a lot of things with me, like guitars, books, knitting items… even this T-shirt I’m wearing was given to me by friends,” she said as she left the prison for the airport.

Her transfer comes just days after the remaining five members of the The infamous “Bali Nine” drug ring has returned home after nearly 20 years in prison in Indonesia.