A woman from the Philippines who spent nearly 15 years on Indonesia's death row and was nearly executed by firing squad is finally home.
Mary Jane Veloso was sentenced to death in 2010 after she was found carrying 2.6 kg (5.7 lb) of heroin at an Indonesian airport.
But the 39-year-old mother of two has always maintained she was tricked into transporting drugs.
She was flown 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 make a fresh start in the Philippines,” she told a news conference, adding that she wanted to spend Christmas with her family.
“I have to go home because I have a family there, I have my children waiting for me.”
Even if the agreement stipulates that Veloso will return prisoner, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos could grant her a reprieve. She is now being held in the country's main women's prison in Metro Manila.
Veloso was arrested in April 2010 at Yogyakarta airport.
She said she was convinced by the daughter of one of her godparents to go to Indonesia to start a new job as a housekeeper.
She claimed the woman's male friends gave her new clothes and a new bag, which she was unaware contained heroin.
She was scheduled to be shot in 2015, but Benigno Aquino III, then president of the Philippines, was granted a last-minute reprieve after the woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested and tried on human trafficking charges. Veloso was named a prosecution witness in the case.
His reprieve was so late that several newspapers in the Philippines published front pages and headlines reporting that it had happened.
Veloso's case has aroused widespread public sympathy in the Philippines, where the death penalty is not used.
Her situation was familiar to many in the Philippines, where it is common for women to escape poverty by seeking work abroad as domestic help.
“I bring a lot of things, like a guitar, books, knitwear… even this T-shirt I'm wearing was given to me by my friends,” she said upon her release from prison for the airport.
His transfer comes just days after the five remaining members of the infamous “Bali Nine” drug ring returned home after serving nearly 20 years in Indonesian prisons.
