Indonesia sends ailing French national on death row back home
Serge Atlaoui has spent almost 20 years in an Indonesian prison for drug offenses.
Indonesian authorities have escorted an ailing French national who has been on death row to the airport in Jakarta as his return to France got underway following an agreement between the two nations.
Serge Atlaoui, who has spent almost 20 years in an Indonesian prison for drug offences, won a last-minute reprieve from execution by a 13-member firing squad in 2015, after France’s government stepped up pressure because Atlaoui still had an outstanding court appeal.
The father-of-four, who is now 61 and reportedly has cancer, made a last-ditch plea to be returned home in December by writing to the Indonesian government requesting to serve the rest of his sentence in France.
Paris responded and the transfer agreement was signed remotely by Indonesia’s senior minister of law Yusril Ihza Mahendra and France’s Minister of Justice Gerald Darmanin on January 24, allowing for Atlaoui to return home on Tuesday.
Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 for his alleged involvement in a factory manufacturing the psychedelic drug MDMA, sometimes called ecstasy, on the outskirts of Jakarta.
His lawyers say he was employed as a welder at the factory and did not understand what the chemicals on the premises were used for.
Atlaoui was taken from Salemba Prison in Jakarta on Tuesday afternoon in a car to the airport, where he is to board a commercial flight to Paris later in the day. His arrival in France is expected on Wednesday morning.
He made no comment to a crush of reporters outside the prison.
Once he is back in France, Atlaoui would serve the rest of his sentence under French law, said I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram, an immigration and corrections official. “The Indonesian government will continue to encourage and strengthen the spirit of fighting against drugs in our country,” he added.
Atlaoui, wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, a black baseball cap and a facemask, was brought before reporters at the airport, though he did not speak.
French Ambassador Fabien Penone thanked Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and his government for the transfer.
About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including nearly 100 foreigners, according to the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections data.
Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian citizen and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.
Indonesia’s government in December returned Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina who had been on death row and who was nearly executed by firing squad in 2015, after longstanding requests from her home country.
Five Australians who spent almost 20 years in Indonesian prisons for heroin trafficking also returned to Australia in the same month under a deal struck between the governments.
Following the recent repatriation of foreign convicts, Jakarta is considering legislating new rules on prisoner amnesty and transfers as part of a wider aim to ease congestion in the country’s overcrowded prisons.
