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| Mary Jane has been in death row for 14 years (photo from Veloso family) |
Fourteen years after being found with 2.6 kilograms
of heroin in her luggage on arrival in Indonesia and being put on death row,
Filipina Mary Jane Veloso is set to go home.
President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. said in a statement today
that his Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto has agreed to allow Mary Jane to return home.
“We
managed to delay her execution long enough to reach an agreement to finally
bring her back to the Philippines,” said Marcos.
He
added, “Mary Jane’s story resonates with many: a mother trapped by the grip of
poverty who made one desperate choice that altered the course of her life.
While she was held accountable under Indonesian law, she remains a victim of
her circumstances.”
However,
it remains unclear whether the 39-year-old mother of two will be set free on
her return or transferred to a Philippine prison.
Yesterday,
the Department of Foreign Affairs said the Philippine and Indonesian governments
have discussed the potential transfer of Mary Jane to a detention facility in
Manila, but gave no other details.
However,
DFA spokesperson Eduardo de Vega said President Marcos could extend her executive
clemency once she is returned home.
Migrante
International, which has maintained for years that Mary Jane was a victim of human
trafficking and should not be punished, immediately released a statement
thanking both the Philippine and Indonesian governments for pursuing diplomatic
and political solutions to her case.
It
added a call for the Marcos government to grant Mary Jane immediate clemency on
her return home on humanitarian grounds, and because she should be regarded as
a victim and not a criminal offender.
Mary
Jane was arrested in 2010 on her arrival at Adisutjpto International Airport in
Yogyakarta after the drugs were found in her luggage.
Veloso
has maintained that she was unaware of the contents of her luggage as it was
only given to her by her recruiters whom she identified as Julius Lacanilao and
Maria Kristina Sergio.
Veloso
worked in Dubai as a domestic helper for 10 months before returning to the
Philippines in January 2010, claiming her employer had tried to rape her.
In
April 18 of the same year, her friend Maria Kristina Sergio or “Tintin” of
Talavera, Nueva Ecija offered her a job as a domestic worker in Malaysia.
Two
days later, the two flew to Malaysia, where Tintin told Mary Jane the job was
no longer available, but that she could still find her another job.
A
few days later, Tintin sent Mary Jane to Indonesia for a supposed seven-day
holiday, and promised to let her go back to Malaysia for employment afterwards.
On
her arrival in Yogjakarta, Veloso was arrested by Customs and Excise authorities
after the drugs were found in the luggage she was carrying.
She
was sentenced to death on October 11, 2010. Since then, the Philippine
government has sought to get her released in response to appeals from various
non-government organizations and migrant support groups, to no avail.
Meanwhile,
her alleged traffickers were convicted of large-scale illegal recruitment in a
separate case by a Nueva Ecija court on Jan. 30, 2020, and sentenced to life in
prison.
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