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| Mary Jane Veloso |
Mary Jane Veloso’s problems began in April 2010 when, she said, she was offered a job as a maid in Malaysia. She had an infant and a small child — and very little money.
She said she had been raped while trying to earn a living as a maid in Dubai and was forced to leave.
She needed a new job, and her neighbor Maria Cristina Sergio, now 47, reportedly told her about the maid position in Malaysia.
When she got there, Veloso recounted later, she was told the position had been filled but that there was another one in Indonesia, according to the Straits Times.
Veloso said she followed Sergio to the country’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, where she stayed for several days. Sergio reportedly took her to meet two men who, Veloso said, bought her nice clothes and luggage.
She said she noticed the suitcase felt heavy but was told it was because it was new. “I checked all the zipper and pockets of the bag,” she later wrote in a letter from jail, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “All were empty and I did not think that something was wrong with it.”
But when Veloso arrived at the airport in Indonesia, security alarms sounded.
“My body felt so cold. I could not speak. I just cried and cried,” she wrote in the letter.
Authorities rifled through her luggage. Sewn into the lining of her bag, they found 2.6 kilograms of heroin worth about a half-million dollars. “I knew my life was finished,” Veloso wrote.
She was arrested and, months later, convicted of the crime. Sergio reportedly fled.
But Sergio, who now faces punishment for illegal recruitment, human trafficking and fraud, claims she’s innocent, CNN Philippines reported.
Veloso, who was facing certain death, now has a small semblance of hope. Over the weekend, she was among the prisoners given the standard 72-hour notice that they were going to be killed.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino asked Indonesia to commute her sentence. Manny Pacquiao, the world champion boxer, made a similar plea to Widodo on live television.
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