Jane Perlez, Banda Aceh – An American nurse freed after having been convicted by the Indonesian authorities of visa violations, which involved contacting separatist rebels, says she wants to continue her one-woman health mission among displaced people.
Joy Lee Sadler, 57, who was released on Friday, seemed relieved that four months in detention, including three on a hunger strike and what she called the hell of the first week in captivity at a military camp, was over.
She would return to the United States within days, she said. "I have no hard feelings toward anyone, only at stupidity and cruelty," she said.
She and her British companion Lesley McCulloch, 43, who has been lecturing in Australia, were arrested in guerilla territory in September. McCulloch is due to be released next month. Both women were travelling on tourist visas.
A court in Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province, found the women guilty of visa violations on December 30. Sadler was given a four-month sentence.
McCulloch, the more politically oriented of the pair, who is known as a partisan of the separatist rebels, was sentenced to five months' jail. The time they had already served was taken into account by the judge.
An unlikely humanitarian worker in such a distant place, Sadler, is HIV positive, having contracted the virus from a surgery patient in Iowa. She said she was inspired by the example of an Iowa doctor, Daniel Murphy, with whom she worked in East Timor in 1998.
Her life took a different turn when she met McCulloch in a supermarket in Banda Aceh. Two weeks later they decided to travel together into the rural areas. Sadler carried some basic medical equipment – stethoscope, blood pressure equipment and a few medicines she had bought here.
Sadler and McCulloch were arrested on September 11 when the military stopped the bus on which they were travelling. She had just finished treating some displaced civilians in a makeshift camp.
"Right away the commander hit Lesley with a truncheon," Sadler said. "I hit the commander and all hell broke loose."