Indonesia prepares to send home an ailing French national on death row

Indonesian authorities on Tuesday were set to return an ailing French national who has been on death row in the Southeast Asian country, under an arrangement between the two nations.

Serge Atlaoui, who has spent almost 20 years in an Indonesian prison for drug offenses, won a last-minute reprieve from execution by a 13-member firing squad in 2015, after France's government stepped up pressure because Atlaoui still had an outstanding court appeal.

Indonesia executed eight others in May 2015, but Atlaoui was granted a stay of execution. An Administrative Court in Jakarta denied his last court appeal the following month.

The father of four, who is now 61 and reportedly suffering from cancer, made a last-ditch plea to be returned home in December by writing to the Indonesian government requesting to serve the rest of his sentence in France.

Paris responded and the transfer agreement was signed remotely by Indonesia’s senior minister of law Yusril Ihza Mahendra and France’s Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin on Jan. 24. The deal allows Atlaoui to return home on Tuesday.

Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 for his alleged involvement in a factory manufacturing the psychedelic drug MDMA, sometimes called ecstasy, on the outskirts of Jakarta. His lawyers say he was employed as a welder at the factory and did not understand what the chemicals on the premises were used for.

Atlaoui, from Metz, has maintained his innocence during his 19 years behind bars, claiming he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant. Police accused him of being a "chemist" at the site. He was initially sentenced to life, but the Supreme Court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.

About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including nearly 100 foreigners, Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data shows. Indonesia’s last executions, of an Indonesian citizen and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.

Indonesia’s government in December returned Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina woman who had been on death row and who was nearly executed by firing squad in 2015, after longstanding requests from her home country.

Five Australians who spent almost 20 years in Indonesian prisons for heroin trafficking also returned to Australia in the same month under a deal struck between the governments.

Following the recent repatriation of foreign convicts, Jakarta is considering legislating new rules on prisoner amnesty and transfers as part of a wider aim to ease congestion in the country’s overcrowded prisons.