Indonesia sends home an ailing French national on death row

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian authorities on Tuesday escorted an ailing French national who has been on death row in the Southeast Asian country to the airport in Jakarta, marking the start of his return to France under an agreement 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.

In may 2015, Indonesia executed eight other convicts 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 has 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, allowing for 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 the town of Metz in France, 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