In the death corridor in Indonesia for seventeen years, Serge Atlaoui, 61, could in the coming days be repatriated to France. According to several concordant sources in Djakarta, France and Indonesia must sign Friday, January 24, an agreement on the transfer to Paris by Serge Atlaoui, this Frenchman arrested in 2005 and sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2007 for drug trafficking.
Its repatriation will take place on February 4, said Djakarta. France had transmitted an official request for transfer on December 19. The fate of the detainee 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 Djakarta, the authorities accusing him of being a “Chemist”. The artisan welder from Metz (northeast) and father of four, has always tried to be a drug trafficker, saying that he had only established industrial machines in what he believed to 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. Initially sentenced to life prison, he had seen the Supreme Court weighing down the sentence, sentenced it to capital punishment on appeal.
Serge Atlaoui was to be executed alongside eight others convicted in 2015, but obtained a temporary stay after Paris intensified the pressure, the Indonesian authorities having agreed to let a appeal in suspense follow his course.
Four other French people 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 two women, 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. Five Australians members of « Bali 9 »arrested on the tourism island in 2005 for drug trafficking and sentenced to heavy prison sentences, were also repatriated to their country on December 15.
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. The latest capital executions in Indonesia date back to 2016: an Indonesian and three Nigerians, convicted of drug trafficking, had been shot.
According to the NGO together against the death penalty (ECPM), based in Paris, in addition to Serge 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.
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