Star Metro - Frenchman on death row in Indonesia to return home

Indonesia, which has some of the world's toughest drug laws, has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipina mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called "Bali Nine" drug ring.

Serge Atlaoui, 61, will be driven from Salemba prison in Jakarta to the city's main airport in a convoy before being handed over to French police officers and boarding a commercial flight to Paris, due to arrive Wednesday morning.

Upon arrival, "he will be taken to Bobigny (a suburb of Paris), presented to prosecutors and most likely detained while awaiting a decision on the adaptation (of his sentence)", his lawyer Richard Sedillot told AFP.

Then "in the coming weeks or months" the lawyer will request that a French court "adapt his sentence to grant his freedom".

"Serge is happy and calm", added Sedillot, "but he is going to need a little bit of time to reorganise himself".

France requested his return officially on November 4 and it was made possible after an agreement between the French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin and his Indonesian counterpart Yusril Ihza Mahendra on January 24.

In the agreement, Jakarta said they had decided "not to execute the prisoner" and authorised his return on "humanitarian grounds" because "he is ill".

Atlaoui has been receiving weekly medical treatment at a nearby hospital.

Jakarta also left it to the French government to grant Atlaoui -- the only Frenchman on death row in Indonesia -- "clemency, amnesty or a reduced sentence".

- Death penalty appeal -

Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 at a factory in a Jakarta suburb where tens of kilos of drugs were discovered and accused of being a "chemist" by the authorities.

A welder from Metz in northeastern France, the father of four has always denied being a drug trafficker, saying that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylic factory.

"I thought there was something suspicious (about the factory)," Atlaoui told AFP in 2015.

Initially sentenced to life in prison, his sentence was reviewed by the supreme court and changed to death on appeal.

He was due to be executed alongside eight others in 2015, but was granted a reprieve after Paris applied more pressure and the Indonesian authorities allowed an outstanding appeal to proceed.

There are currently at least 530 inmates on death row in Indonesia, according to the human rights organisation Kontas, referencing official figures.

Among them 90 foreigners, including at least one woman, according to the Ministry of Immigration and Correction.

The Indonesian government recently signalled it will resume executions, on hiatus since 2016.

In December, Filipina inmate Mary Jane Veloso, who was arrested in 2010 and also sentenced to death for drug trafficking, was returned to her home country after an agreement was reached between both countries.

X.Boucher--SMC