He had lived in the corridor of death in Indonesia for seventeen years. Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old French national, sentenced for drug trafficking-accusations he has always denied-will return to France in early February, said on Friday January 24 at the France-Presse agency (AFP), Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Minister in charge of Indonesian Legal Legal Affairs and Human Rights.
Asked about the prisoner’s transfer date, the minister responded “On February 4, as required by the French government”in a message. The agreement is to be signed on Friday at 3 p.m. locals (9 am in Paris), after confirmation of the French Minister of Justice, Gérald Darmanin, said Yusril on Thursday evening to AFP. The fate of Mr. Atlaoui once he has arrived on French soil could be specified on Friday.
France had transmitted on December 19 to Indonesia an official request for the transfer of Mr. Atlaoui, said, at the end of December, Mr. Yusril. Paris then asked for the “Immediate return” of Serge Atlaoui due to ” the deterioration of [son] state of health ”.
Serge Atlaoui had been arrested in 2005 in a factory where drugs had been discovered, in the suburbs of Djakarta, 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. The case had caused a stir in Indonesia, where anti -Drogue legislation is one of the most severe in the world.
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At least four other French people currently sentenced to death in the world
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 Djakarta, he recently followed a treatment in a hospital in the capital until recently.
Indonesia currently has at least 530 convicted 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 nineteen years in prison, which he is currently serving.
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According to the NGO together against the death penalty (ECPM), based in Paris, in addition to Mr. Atlaoui, at least four French are currently sentenced to death in the world: two men in Morocco and one in China as well as a woman in Algeria.
