Jakarta and Paris signed on Friday an agreement providing for the transfer of Serge Atlaoui, a Frenchman sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2007 for drug trafficking, said Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesian Minister in charge of legal and human rights on Friday.
Indonesia and France signed on Friday an agreement providing for the transfer to Paris by Serge Atlaoui, a 61 -year -old Frenchman and sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2007 for drug trafficking, announced Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesian Minister in charge of Legal and human rights affairs. “We have just signed a technical agreement between the Indonesian government and the French Republic (…) to transfer a French citizen by the name of Serge Atlaoui,” said Yusril Ihza Mahendra during a press point, in the presence of the French ambassador to Indonesia, Fabien Penone.
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Fabien Penone thanked “infinitely” Yusril Ihza Mahendra “on behalf of the French authorities” for the decision to authorize the transfer of Serge Atlaoui. The agreement was initialed in the early afternoon in Jakarta by Yusril Ihza Mahendra and by Gérald Darmanin, French Minister of Justice, from a distance from Paris, by videoconferencing. The two governments will now finalize the details of its repatriation, which will take place on February 4 at the request of the French government, Yusril Ihza Mahendra told AFP on Friday.
A prisoner arrested … in 2005
The fate of Serge Atlaoui once he has arrived on French soil should also be specified in the agreement. Initially planned Wednesday, the signing of the agreement was postponed for the first time to Thursday, for calendar reasons, according to a source close to the discussions, then on Friday. “It is obviously a great relief to finally know the agreement concluded between France and Indonesia and aimed at the transfer of Serge (Atlaoui),” reacted for AFP Richard Sédillot, his French lawyer.
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“In recent days have been difficult, since the conclusion of the agreement has been postponed several times,” he added, from France, indicating that he was going to “now continue in France (Son) assistance with Serge”. France had transmitted on December 19 to Indonesia an official request for the transfer of Serge Atlaoui.
Serge Atlaoui had been arrested in 2005 in a factory where dozens of kilos of drugs had been discovered, in the suburbs of Jakarta, and the authorities accused him of being a “chemist”. The artisan welder from Metz, in northeast France, father of four, has always defended himself from being a drug trafficker, saying that he had only established industrial machines in What he thought was an acrylic factory.
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The case had caused a stir in Indonesia, where anti -Drogue legislation is one of the most severe in the world.
Appeal to death on appeal
Initially sentenced to life prison, he had seen the Supreme Court weighs down the sentence and condemn it to capital punishment on appeal. It was to be executed alongside eight others convicted in 2015, but obtained a reprieve after Paris intensified the pressure, the Indonesian authorities having agreed to let a appeal in suspense follow its course. Sick and transferred to Salemba prison, in Jakarta, he recently followed a treatment in a hospital in the capital until recently.
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“We are delighted with this transfer decision initiated by the Indonesian authorities and know that Serge Atlaoui can now return to France after all that he has experienced in the past 20 years,” said Raphaël Chenil-Hazan, Managing Director of The French association together against the death penalty (ECPM), in a reaction transmitted to AFP.
Serge Atlaoui “has largely purged his sentence and far beyond, we expect France to him an act of leniency and humanity to the measure of the symbol he represented in the international movement against the death penalty” , he added. Indonesia currently has at least 530 sentenced in the death corridor, according to the Kontras rights association, citing official data.
Among them, more than 90 foreigners, including at least one woman, according to the Ministry of Immigration and Correctional Services. A 39-year-old Philippine, Mary Jane Veloso, arrested in 2010 and also sentenced to capital punishment for drug trafficking, was repatriated to the Philippines in mid-December, after an agreement between the two countries.
Another Frenchman, Félix Dorfin, arrested on the tourist island of Lombok, had been sentenced, beyond the requisitions, to the death penalty in 2019, also for drug trafficking that he has always denied. The sentence was then commissioned in a sentence of 19 years' imprisonment which he is currently serving. According to the NGO ECPM, whose headquarters are in Paris, in addition to Mr. Atlaoui, at least four French are currently sentenced to death in the world: two men in Morocco, one in China as well as a woman in Algeria.
