The 61 -year -old Frenchman, who should have been executed in 2015 before obtaining a stay, will be transferred to Paris on February 4.
A return, almost 20 years later. Serge Atlaoui, a Frenchman sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2007 for drug trafficking, was to be transferred on February 4 to France, AFP said on Friday, January 24, to AFP Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesian Minister in charge of Legal Affairs and Rights humans.
Asked about the date of the transfer of the 61 -year -old 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.
Agreement signed by 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 early in the afternoon in Jakarta by Yusril Ihza Mahendra and by Gérald Darmanin, French Minister of Justice, remotely from Paris, by videoconferencing,” a source close to AFP told AFP Negotiations.
The media were invited by the Indonesian ministry to a press conference from 3 p.m., local time, “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 request for the transfer of the prisoner.
Suspended execution
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.”
-This artisan welder from Metz, in northeast of France, father of four, has always defended himself from being a drug trafficker, saying that he had only established industrial machines in this that he thought he 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.
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.
More than 90 foreigners sentenced to death
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.
According to the NGO together against the death penalty (ECPM), the seat of which is in Paris, in addition to Serge Atlaoui, at least four French are currently sentenced to death in the world: two men in Morocco, one in China as well as than a woman in Algeria.
