Ailing French man on death row pleads to return home as Indonesia to pardon 44,000 prisoners

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An ailing French national on death row for drug offenses has made a last-ditch plea to be returned home, Indonesian authorities said Friday, as the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto planned to give pardon to 44,000 inmates nationwide.

Subianto has surprised the nation with the clemency plan, barely two months after he took office. Past Indonesian leaders have rarely used the presidential prerogative of giving amnesty.

Serge Atlaoui, who had spent almost 20 years in Indonesian prison, won a last-minute reprieve in 2015 and was excluded from being executed by a 13-member firing squad.

The father of four, who turned 61 on Monday and is reportedly suffering from cancer, wrote to the Indonesian government requesting to serve the rest of his sentence in his home country, according to Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for law, human rights, immigration and corrections.

Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 for 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.

“We are forwarding a personal request from Serge Atlaoui to the Indonesian government which of course should be responded by the French government, because this concerns the transfer of a prisoner,” Mahendra told a joint news conference with French Ambassador Fabien Penone after a meeting on Friday.

Law Minister Supratman Andi Agtas said after a cabinet meeting last week that humanitarianism and rehabilitation were the main reasons for the decision to release about 44,000 prisoners from the country’s notoriously overcrowded prisons. No names or details have been disclosed in the announcement.

Indonesia’s government on Wednesday 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.

On Sunday, five Australians who spent almost 20 years in Indonesian prisons for heroin trafficking returned to Australia under a deal struck between the governments.

In the case of Atlaoui, Mahendra said it was in the initial stages and will take some time because there has been no official request from the French government.

French Ambassador Penone said that Mahendra has briefed him about the case and that he is working with the Indonesian government.

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 “in all places and under all circumstances.”

Indonesia executed eight others 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 his last court appeal in June 2015.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Indonesia is a major drug smuggling hub despite having some of the strictest drug laws in the world, in part because international drug syndicates target its young population.

About 530 people are on death row in Indonesia, mostly for drug-related crimes, including nearly 100 foreigners, the Ministry of Immigration and Corrections’ data showed last month. Indonesia’s last executions, of a citizen and three foreigners, were carried out in July 2016.

Andi Jatmiko And Niniek Karmini, The Associated Press