Shock death sentence for British woman in Indonesia

When I talked to Lindsay Sandiford last year she admitted she had known that she was doing something wrong when she took a suitcase from Bangkok to Bali in late May 2012.

However, she claims she didn't know she was carrying drugs.

She has, in previous months, also alleged that her sons were being threatened with harm if she didn't carry the suitcase.

Today's sentence has come as a shock.

The prosecutors had asked for a 15 year sentence. Lindsay Sandiford, through her lawyers, had pleaded for a reduced sentence because after she had been arrested she helped customs and the police set up a 'sting' operation which led them to three other British suspects.

The judge appears to have rejected any calls for leniency.

Appeals against a death sentence could take up to 8 years in Indonesia. That's been the drawn out process in the case of 9 Australians convicted to trafficking heroin in Bali in 2005.

If the death sentence is ever carried out, and there is a question mark over that, then execution is by firing squad in a jungle clearing near a prison on an island known as 'Indonesia's Alcatraz'.