“It’s a new life for me and I’ll have a new start in the Philippines,” she told a press conference, adding that she wanted to spend Christmas with her family.
“I need to go home because I have a family there, my children are waiting for me.”
Although the agreement says Velaza will return to captivity, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos can grant her a reprieve. She is now in custody at the country’s main women’s prison in Metro Manila.
Velaza was arrested in April 2010 at Yogyakarta Airport.
She said the daughter of one of her godparents convinced her to go to Indonesia to start a new job as a maid.
She claimed the woman’s friends had given her new clothes and a new bag, which she didn’t know was laced with heroin.
She was supposed to be shot in 2015, but Benigno Aquino III, who was president of the Philippines at the time, secured a last-minute reprieve for her after a woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested and put on trial for human trafficking. Veloza was called as a prosecution witness in the case.
Her reprieve was so late that several newspapers in the Philippines went to print with front pages and headlines reporting that it had happened.
