(24 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jakarta, Indonesia – 24 January 2025
1. Indonesia’s senior Minister of Law Yusril Ihza Mahendra and France’s Ambassador to Indonesia Fabien Panone walk into joint press conference room
2. Mahendra and Panone at press conference
3. SOUNDBITE (Indonesian) Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesia’s senior Minister of Law:
++PARTLY OVERLAID WITH SHOT 4++
“The Indonesian government has decided not to execute the prisoner (Serge Atlaoui) and has agreed to transfer him to France and the French government also has agreed to this. Whether the French president will grant amnesty, clemency or reduce the sentence to become only 30 years imprisonment following the Indonesian court decision that is entirely under France’s authority.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Jakarta, Indonesia – 1 April 2015
4. Various of Serge Atlaoui, a Frenchman on death row on drugs charges, sitting in court
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jakarta, Indonesia – 24 January 2025
5. End of news conference
STORYLINE:
Indonesia signed a deal on Friday to repatriate an ailing French national who has been on death row since 2007 for alleged drug offenses.
In 2015 Serge Atlaoui won a last-minute reprieve from being executed by a 13-member firing squad.
The transfer agreement was signed remotely by Indonesia’s senior Minister of Law Yusril Ihza Mahendra and France’s Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, and was witnessed by delegations from both countries in Jakarta and Paris.
It came after Atlaoui, 61, made a last-ditch plea to be returned home last month.
The father of four, who is reportedly suffering from cancer, wrote to the Indonesian government requesting to serve the rest of his sentence in France.
The deal will allow him to return home on Feb. 4, Mahendra said.
"The Indonesian government has decided not to execute the prisoner and has agreed to transfer him to France,” Mahendra told a joint news conference attended by France’s ambassador to Indonesia, Fabien Penone.
Penone thanked the Indonesian government for granting Atlaoui’s request.
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 Metz, has maintained his innocence during his 19 years’ incarceration, claiming that 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 in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.
His case has drawn attention in France, which vigorously opposes the death penalty.
Mahendra said the French government had informed him that the maximum criminal penalty in France was 30 years imprisonment.
"Whether the French president will grant amnesty, clemency or reduce the sentence to become only 30 years imprisonment following the Indonesian court decision that is entirely under France’s authority,” Mahendra said
Indonesia executed eight death-row prisoners in May 2015, but Atlaoui was granted a stay of execution because he still had an outstanding court appeal.
An Administrative Court in Jakarta denied that appeal the following month.
Indonesia’s government last month returned Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina woman who had been on death row and who was nearly executed by firing squad in 2015, after longstanding requests from her home country.
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