France has requested Indonesia transfer death row convict Serge Atlaoui

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 told Agence France-Presse (AFP), on Friday, November 29.

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 November 4, containing a request for the transfer of a French prisoner named Serge Atlaoui,” senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told AFP in a message. The French embassy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

In 2005, Atlaoui, a welder, was arrested in a secret drugs factory outside Jakarta, with authorities accusing him of being a “chemist” at the site. Meanwhile, the father of four has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.

World’s toughest drug laws

He was initially sentenced to life in prison but the Supreme Court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal. Muslim-majority Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past.

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 the city of 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.

Other high-profile detainees that are in discussion to be transferred include Mary Jane Veloso, a Philippine woman who was granted a stay of execution in 2015, and the five remaining members of Australia’s “Bali Nine,” all convicted on drug charges. Two from the group were executed by firing squad, one died of cancer and another was released in 2018.