Ongoing battle: Atlaoui (left) was arrested in 2005 in a secret drugs factory outside Jakarta. — AFP
FRANCE has asked Indonesia to transfer a French death row convict, who has been jailed for drug crimes in the Asian nation since 2005, a senior Indonesian minister said.
Indonesia is in discussion with three countries, including France, over the return of several high-profile detainees and aims to transfer the prisoners by the end of December.
“The French embassy has delivered a letter from France’s justice minister to Indonesia’s law minister dated Nov 4 containing a request for the transfer of a French prisoner named Serge Atlaoui,” senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said yesterday.
Atlaoui, a welder, was arrested in 2005 in a secret drugs factory outside Jakarta, with authorities accusing him of being a “chemist” at the site.
But the father of four has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.
He was initially sentenced to life in prison but the Supreme Court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.
Atlaoui was detained on the island of Nusakambangan in Central Java, known as Indonesia’s “Alcatraz”, following the death sentence, but he was transferred to Tangerang, west of Jakarta, in 2015 ahead of his appeal.
That year, he was due to be executed alongside eight other drug offenders but won a temporary reprieve after Paris stepped up pressure, with Indonesian authorities agreeing to let an outstanding appeal run its course.
In the appeal, Atlaoui’s lawyers argued that then-president Joko Widodo did not properly consider his case as he rejected Atlaoui’s plea for clemency – typically a death row convict’s last chance to avoid the firing squad.
The court, however, upheld its previous decision that it did not have the jurisdiction to hear a challenge over the clemency plea.
Atlaoui is currently detained in a penitentiary in Jakarta, Yusril said.
Muslim-majority Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past. — AFP
