Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso is a Filipino woman who was arrested and sentenced to death for smuggling heroin into Indonesia. Her case, among others, sparked international attention towards Indonesia's capital punishment and drug prohibition laws.
Biography
Veloso was born in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, where she was the youngest of five siblings of a family who lived in extreme poverty.Her father worked as a seasonal agricultural worker on sugar cane plantations of the José Cojuangco owned Hacienda Luisita, while also selling plastic-ware out of a pushcart and collecting discarded bottles and plastic to sell to junk shops. Veloso dropped out in her first year of high school. and married her husband when she was around 17 years old, however they later separated resulting in her becoming a single mother to two young sons. To help provide for her family, Veloso emigrated to Dubai in 2009 to work as a household service worker, however she soon returned to the Philippines before the end of her two-year contract after an attempted rape by her employer.
Background to Arrest
In April 2010, Veloso was recruited by Maria Kristina Sergio to be a domestic worker in Malaysia. To cover administrative costs, Veloso paid Sergio PHP 20,000 in cash as well as giving her a motorcycle and her cell phone. On arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Sergio told Veloso that the job was no longer available, however she had arranged similar employment in Indonesia for her. As Veloso had arrived in Malaysia with only a few items of clothing, Sergio brought her shopping for new clothes and then gave her an empty suitcase to pack her things into.
Arrest in Indonesia
On 25 April 2010, Veloso arrived at Adisucipto International Airport in Yogyakarta. Airport officials scanning Veloso's luggage in the X-ray machine were alerted to unusual objects and ordered her bag to be fully searched. After finding nothing illegal amongst her possessions, the now empty suitcase was again scanned, and the customs officers confirmed they had detected suspicious items within it. After dismantling Veloso's suitcase the officers discovered of heroin hidden in the inner lining, worth an estimated US$500,000.
Trial and Verdict
On 4 October 2010, Veloso's trial began in Yogyakarta's Sleman District Court, where she was represented by court-appointed pro bono lawyer Edy Haryanto. Throughout her trial, she maintained her innocence, claiming that she was duped into carrying the suitcase by her recruiter, a godsister of hers named Maria Kristina Sergio, who convinced her to go to Indonesia after losing a job in Malaysia. Her Indonesian lawyer, Agus Salim, noted that she neither had a lawyer nor a Tagalog translator during her interrogation; and that during her sentencing, although she was represented by a public defender, her courtroom interpreter was not a licensed professional.
On 11 October 2010, despite public prosecutor Sri Anggraeni recommending life imprisonment as punishment, Veloso was sentenced to death by the presiding judge. However, due to a moratorium on capital punishment enacted by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Veloso's execution was put on indefinite hold. After the 2014 election of Joko Widodo as President of Indonesia, the death penalty became active again as a judicial punishment. On 24 March 2015, the Supreme Court of Indonesia rejected Veloso's final appeal and ordered that preparations for her execution to proceed.
Stay of Execution
Veloso was scheduled to be executed in Nusa Kambangan together with the Bali Nine duo from Australia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran; Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte; an Indonesian and four Nigerians at 1:00 AM WIB (2:00 AM PHT) on 29 April 2015.
At midnight of 29 April 2015, however, Veloso was granted a stay of execution so that she could act as a witness for the trial of her alleged human trafficker. News of the reprieve came so close to the scheduled time of her execution such that several news outlets reported preemptively that it occurred. The front-page headline on one newspaper read "Death Came Before Dawn".
Veloso was granted temporary reprieve after reports that her trafficker (Maria Cristina Sergio) had surrendered to police in Manila, which prompted Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to appeal for clemency on the basis that her testimony could be invaluable in the prosecuting her alleged recruiter. Philippine authorities invoked the ASEAN Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), obliging Indonesia to offer Veloso as a state witness in the ensuing human trafficking case.