Jakarta: A New Zealand-born Sydneysider who spent nine months in Bali's Kerobokan prison for possessing a half-smoked marijuana joint has been released and will be deported to New Zealand.
Leeza Tracey Ormsby, 38, will be barred from entering Indonesia again for six months, and possibly for life.
Ms Ormsby was released from prison shortly after 11am, local time, and handed over to the immigration department to process her deportation.
Ms Ormsby told reporters she was "happy" to be out.
New Kerobokan Prison governor Sudjonggo, who met Ms Ormsby only on the day of her release, said she had thanked him.
"I told her, don't come back," Mr Sudjonggo said. "She learned how to crochet while in prison."
The head of supervision at the airport immigration office, Mohammad Soleh, said that, as a New Zealand citizen, Ms Ormsby would be sent there, via Sydney, leaving Bali at 12.10am on Thursday and arriving in Auckland at 3.30pm.
Her passport would be "red stamped" Mr Mohammad said, and a recommendation made that she not be allowed to return to Indonesia for six months.
Since drugs offences are seen as "extraordinary crimes" under Indonesian law, "she may be prevented from entering Indonesia for life", Mr Mohammad said. However that was up to the department in Jakarta to decide.
Mr Mohammad confirmed that Schapelle Corby would receive the same treatment - red stamp, potential life travel ban and immediate deportation -- after her parole is finished in 2017.
Ms Ormsby was arrested on February 12 as she used a key to try to enter a villa where police had been tipped off about "foreigners having a drug party".
More than 132 grams of MDMA and 26 grams of hashish were found in a locked drawer inside the villa. This could have given rise to a trafficking charge, particularly as the drugs had been weighed and packaged, apparently ready for individual sale.
But Ms Ormsby herself had only half a joint — 0.3 grams of hashish — in her handbag, which she said she had been given the day before at the beach by a man she only knew as "Robert".
The possession charge, to which Ms Ormsby pleaded guilty, carried a jail sentence of up to 15 years. But she successfully argued that she was an addict, meaning, in Indonesian law, that she was a "drug victim". She was not charged over the large volume of MDMA and hashish.
She was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment but served only nine after being given one-month's remission for good behaviour.
"Since she received a sentence cut, she must have been well behaved [while serving her time]," Mr Sudjonggo said.
With Amilia Rosa
