Struggling to hold back her tears, 26-year-old Banten native Siti Aisyah expressed her utmost gratitude to those she might have considered most responsible for her release from Malaysian custody.

“I offer my praise to Allah […] to my parents who continued to pray for me […] to President [Joko “Jokowi” Widodo] […] to Ibu Menlu [Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi] […] and to Pak Iqbal [Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, director for citizen protection],” Siti said at a press conference in Jakarta on Monday evening.

Her public appearance at the Foreign Ministry compound, which saw her ceremonially reunited with her parents Asria and Benah, was her third of the day, after being ushered to and from similar photo opportunities in Kuala Lumpur and Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in Jakarta’s east.

Siti was released early Monday after prosecutors at a Malaysian court dropped a charge against her for the 2017 murder of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

She had been on trial for almost a year-and-a-half alongside Vietnamese suspect Doan Thi Huong in a bizarre case that had raised eyebrows around the world.

The surprise decision came during trial when the presiding judge agreed to a discharge without an acquittal, and ordered Siti’s immediate release. This means she has not been cleared of the charge and could still be arrested again.

“Today’s trial was supposed to be for Doan [Thi Huong], but the public prosecutors asked the judge if they were allowed to [announce a decision to drop the murder charge against Siti],” said Iqbal, the ministry director who oversaw Siti’s wellbeing in detention. “It was purely an initiative of the prosecutors.”

Siti’s release leaves Huong to continue alone in court — she had been due to testify on Monday but the trial was adjourned following the ruling.

Both women have denied committing murder, saying North Korean spies had tricked them into carrying out the Cold War-style assassination plot using VX nerve agent, believing it was a prank for a reality TV show. Interpol had issued a red notice for four North Koreans who were identified as suspects by Malaysian police and had left the country hours after the murder.

Murder carries a mandatory death sentence in Malaysia.

Indonesian officials, including minister Retno and Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, have characterized the release of Siti as “the fruits of a long journey”, which also included pressure from President Jokowi.

Siti was expected to meet Jokowi on Tuesday, Retno told reporters after Monday’s ceremony.

“We saw that Siti was not part of the network [of spies who carried out the murder], but rather that she had been exploited,” Jokowi said on a separate occasion in Bogor, West Java.

Earlier in the day, Yasonna said the President had made several requests to Malaysia to release Siti, from when former prime minister Najib Razak was still in power until Mahathir Mohamad returned to office last year.

Yasonna himself had raised the issue with Mahathir and Malaysia’s Attorney General Tommy Thomas in August last year.

During a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, officials released a letter showing Yasonna had written to Thomas seeking Siti’s release, on the grounds that she did not intend to kill Kim Jong-nam.

“Siti was deceived and had no awareness whatsoever that she was being used as an intelligence tool of North Korea,” Yasonna said, reading out his points from the letter.

AFP reported that Thomas wrote in his response dated March 8 that he agreed and cited “the good relations between our respective countries”.

The release of Siti Aisyah comes ahead of the general election next month, as well as a still-unannounced official visit to visit Malaysia for Jokowi. However, minister Retno nipped any speculation of politicking in the bud when she said the return of Siti had nothing to do with the upcoming election. “We cannot influence the law in another country,” she told reporters.

Rights group Migrant CARE welcomed the decision of the Shah Alam Court, with director Wahyu Susilo urging the government to take comprehensive steps to restore her reputation and aid in her reintegration into society. “We have seen that the Indonesian government has been proactively providing legal assistance and diplomatic efforts,” Wahyu said.

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