JAKARTA: A Frenchman who has been on death row for drug crimes since 2007 has left jail on Tuesday back of his move to France, according to officials.
Indonesia, which has some of the nation’s toughest drug rules, has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipina mom on death row and the last five members of the so-called” Bali Nine” drug band.
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was taken from Salemba Prison in Jakarta to the town’s main airports where he will be detained before taking a corporate flight to Paris.
His attorney Richard Sedillot told AFP that he will be presented to prosecutors in France” and most good detained while awaiting a choice on the translation of his word.”
Jakarta has left it to the French authorities to give Atlaoui- the only Frenchman on death row in Indonesia” mercy, asylum or a diminished phrase”.
” Speaking is glad and calm”, added Sedillot,” but he is going to need a little bit of time to reorganise himself”.
His profit was made possible on January 24 thanks to a deal reached between Yusril Ihza Mahendra, the head of Indonesia, and the European justice minister Gerald Darmanin.
In the contract, Jakarta claimed that they had chosen to prevent Atlaoui’s execution and authorized his return on “humanitarian basis” because he was poor.
Atlaoui has been receiving medical care at a clinic every week.
Death penalty charm
Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 at a factory in a Jakarta suburb where dozens of kilos ( pounds ) of drugs were discovered and accused of being a” chemist” by the authorities.
The father of four, a machinist from Metz in northern France, has often denied being a drug kingpin, claiming that he was installing machinery in an acrylic shop.
” I thought there was something suspicious ( about the factory )”, Atlaoui told AFP in 2015.
His statement was originally commuted to life in prison, but the supreme court later changed to death on attractiveness.
In 2015, he was scheduled to be executed along with eight others, but he was given a break after Paris demanded help and the Indonesian authorities granted an unfinished charm.
There are now at least 530 individuals on death row in Indonesia, according to the individual rights company Kontas, referencing official statistics.
Among them are 90 foreigners, including at least one woman, according to the ministry of immigration and correction.
The Indonesian government recently announced that it would resume executions after a two-year hiatus.
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.
