Merri Utami spent nearly two decades on death row in Indonesia for a drug crime she was forced to commit under false pretences, before being graced by Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

Merri Utami, 49, was sentenced to death by shooting in 2002 by a court in Tangerang, about 50 kilometres west of Jakarta, after being found guilty of attempting to smuggle heroin into the country, but she has always insisted that she was unaware of her role and that she was targeted and manipulated by professional drug traffickers. Like many women charged with drug offences, Merri came from a background of poverty, abuse and exploitation.

Yet the court that sentenced her to death never knew about her past due to the incompetence of the lawyer at her first trial.

Merri faced daily humiliations within the women’s prison system with courage, fought to make her life tolerable, learned to garden and became an active church member.

One night in 2016, two prison guards woke her up and informed her that she would be transferred to the ‘execution island’, only to be spared along with nine other inmates at the last minute. Seven years later, on 13 March 2023, she was granted clemency by President Widodo who signed the presidential decree to commute her death sentence to a life sentence.

Merri’s lawyer has stated that he will fight for the woman to also regain her freedom.

According to a report by Amnesty International, Indonesia issued at least 114 death sentences in 2021, bringing the number of inmates on the country’s death row to more than 500, some of whom are foreign nationals, and 82 per cent of all recorded death sentences were for drug-related offences.