Renae Lawrence to make special jail request as she prepares for freedom
Bali Nine drug mule Renae Lawrence has announced she will be making a special request to the prison before she is freed in just a matter of days, as authorities reveal her personal health battle.
Renae Lawrence has been visited by friends as she spends her final days in a Bali jail before returning to Australia.
And jail authorities have revealed that Lawrence, previously prone to depression, continues to take anti-depressants.
The 41-year-old Bali Nine heroin courier is due to conclude her 20-year heroin smuggling sentence next Wednesday and has asked jail authorities for permission to have a special Hindu ceremony in the jail’s Hindu temple before she leaves.
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Jaya Sentana, the prisoner service section head of Bangli jail, said Lawrence wanted to express her thanks to the jail before she goes.
“It is conducted as she wants to express her thanks as she believes that she has been protected (spiritually) during her time living here. So, she want to express her thanks,” Mr Sentana said yesterday.
Traditional Hindu offerings will be made during the ceremony. Lawrence follows the Hindu religion but the Jail’s Governor Made Suwendra said he did not believe she had undergone the complicated and lengthy conversion ceremony.
Today, three westerners visited Lawrence in jail but they did not comment about how she is doing as her freedom beckons.
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Mr Suwendra said Lawrence appeared fine. She had visited the jail’s medical clinic to discuss her depression medication - Xanax - and had received a signed letter stating that she has a prescription in order to take it with her to Australia.
“As she is undergoing therapy she needs a recommendation letter of some medicine that is left, as she would bring it home,” Mr Suwendra said.
“I signed the letter today, stating that the medicine has a prescription. So, when she takes it to Australia, if it is examined, she could show it,” he said.
“A letter that state that the medicine is indeed for her therapy.
Gusti Putu Sumertayasa, the doctor at Bangli Jail Clinic, said Lawrence was prescribed Xanax, an anti-depressant, which she had been taking for some time.
Dr Sumertayasa saw Lawrence yesterday and said she was doing well. He said she had been taking the depression medication since she was held in Kerobokan jail and before her 2014 move to Bangli jail. But since being in Bangli the dosage had reduced to 1mg twice a day.
“She has been much better when she entered this jail. Earlier, she had many medicines, but now it is only left Aprazolam or Xanax.
Dr Sumertayasa said that Lawrence had also previously used methadone but that had been reduced slowly and she no longer took it.
Lawrence’s jail term ends on November 21 - 13 years and seven months into her 20-year jail term. The sentence has been reduced by twice-yearly remissions for good behaviour. Immigration officers will collect her from Bangli jail on Wednesday and she will then be taken to the airport and deported to Australia.
She is the first of the Bali Nine to be released from jail. Three have died - Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed by firing squad in 2015 and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died of cancer earlier this year.
The remaining five are all serving life sentences and their only hope rests with getting a reduced sentence from the Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
But each year their applications are turned down.
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