The 61 -year -old Frenchman must be transferred on February 4 to France, said Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesian Minister in charge of legal affairs and human rights. Asked about the date of the transfer of the detainee, who has been in the death corridor for 17 years, the minister replied “on February 4, as required by the French government”, in a message on Friday.
The agreement signed around 9 am with Darmanin
The signing of the transfer agreement, initially scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed for the first time on Thursday, for calendar reasons, according to a source close to the discussions, then on Friday. The agreement must be signed Friday at 3 p.m. (9 a.m. in France), after confirmation of the French Minister of Justice, said Yusril Ihza Mahendra on Thursday evening. “The agreement must be signed Friday early in the afternoon in Jakarta by Mr. Yusril and Gérald Darmanin, French Minister of Justice, from a distance from Paris, by videoconferencing,” said a source close to negotiations.
The media were invited by the Indonesian ministry to a press conference “at the end of the signing in camera of the practical agreement”. Once the agreement is signed, “it will take a few more days to settle the last details,” added this source close to the negotiations. The fate of Serge Atlaoui once he has arrived on French soil could be specified on Friday.
France transmitted on December 19 to Indonesia an official transfer request from Serge Atlaoui. The latter had been arrested in 2005 in a factory where 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. 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.
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 19 years’ imprisonment which he is currently serving.
