Death row Filipino arrives home from Indonesia, then goes straight to jail

Mary Jane Veloso just wants to spend Christmas with her family. She has been imprisoned since 2010 on drug trafficking charges

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Mary Jane Veloso (centre) is embraced by her parents inside a correctional facility in the Philippines on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:27am, 18 Dec 2024Updated: 3:13pm, 19 Dec 2024

A Filipino woman who spent nearly 15 years on Indonesia’s death row tearfully reunited with family members on Wednesday after arriving in Manila, where she now awaits a hoped-for pardon in a women’s prison.

Mother of two Mary Jane Veloso landed at daybreak, then was immediately transferred to prison following a repatriation deal between the two countries over a decade in the making. Technically still serving a life sentence, how long she remains behind bars is now in the hands of President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr.

The 39-year-old was arrested and sentenced to death in 2010 after the suitcase she was carrying was found to be lined with 2.6kg (5.7 pounds) of heroin, in a case that sparked uproar in the Philippines.

Veloso wept as she hugged one of her sons and her parents on Wednesday inside the Correctional Institution for Women in Manila, where she is being detained under the terms of a transfer agreement with Indonesia that removed the possibility of execution.

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Death row survivor returns to Philippines from Indonesia, then goes straight to jail

She flew home without handcuffs alongside Filipino correctional officials on an overnight commercial flight after a ceremony in Jakarta marking “the end of a harrowing chapter in Veloso’s life”, the corrections bureau said in a statement.