The end of an agonizing expectation of almost 18 years. France and Indonesia must sign on Friday an agreement on the transfer to Paris by Serge Atlaoui, a Frenchman sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2007 for drug trafficking. An advance which follows the request made on December 19, 2024 by France, which had demanded the repatriation of the Mosellan welder after having noted the degradation of his state of health. According to Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesian Minister in charge of legal and human rights, the arrival of the 61 -year -old national must take place on February 4.
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 early Friday afternoon in Jakarta by Mr. Yusril and by Gérald Darmanin, French Minister of Justice, from a distance from Paris, by videoconferencing”, A source close to negotiations told AFP.
The media were invited by the Indonesian ministry to a press conference from 3 p.m. “At the end of the closed -door signature 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 negotiations. Maintaining in prison, alternative pain or liberation: the fate of Serge Atlaoui once he has arrived on French soil could be specified on Friday.
Serge Atlaoui 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”. Protestant of his innocence, the craftsman who came from Metz, father of four, always defended himself from being a drug trafficker, saying that he had only established industrial machines in what he believed be 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. Previously, it was the Savoyard cooking Michaël Blanc, arrested in 1999 at the age of 26 with 3.8 kilos of hashish in diving bottles, which had received a perpetuity prison sentence. He had spent fifteen years in prison before benefiting from parole and being authorized to leave the country in 2018.
According to the NGO together against the death penalty (ECPM), the seat of which is in Paris, at least four other French people are currently sentenced to death in the world: two men in Morocco, one in China as well as a woman in Algeria.
