French man of death in Indonesia to return home

A French citizen held to death in Indonesia since 2007 for drug crimes returns to France on Tuesday as part of an agreement concluded between the two countries.

The 61 -year -old Serge Atlaui was accused of being a “chemist” by the Indonesian authorities and arrested in 2005 in a factory in Jakarta, where tens of pounds (kilograms) drugs were found.

An agreement was concluded between Indonesia and France on January 24 to extradite a father at four years of “humanitarian reasons” as he has cancer and receives weekly hospital treatment.

“This is a miracle,” his wife Sabin Atlaui told RTL radio in France. “He survived from 19 years’ imprisonment. He survived after execution.”

The 61-year-old was Submitted to the French police at the soykno-haata International Airport in Jakarta and flew on a commercial flight to Paris at 19:35 local time (12:35 GMT), said an AFP news agency employee.

When he lands on Wednesday morning, Atlaui will be presented to prosecutors “and most likely he will be detained while waiting for a decision” for his future presence, his lawyer Richard Sedilot told AFP.

In France, the maximum punishment for such a crime is 30 years, Indonesia Minister of Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra told Reuters.

It is up to Paris to provide “reconciliation, amnesty or reduced sentence,” he said.

Sedilot told AFP that he was “delighted” by extradition and “will now work to ensure that the sentence is adapted to conditions that will allow it to be released.”

Atlaui told his family that he did not want to meet them at the airport, his wife said.

“He wants to see his family again when he is free,” she told RTL. “Unfortunately, we don’t know how long it will take.”

Atlaui, a Metz welder in northeastern France, has always denied being drug trafficking.

He claims to install machines in an acrylic factory, but told AFP in 2015 that he “thinks there is something suspicious.”

Initially sentenced to life in prison, the sentence was changed to death upon appeal by the Supreme Court of Indonesia.

Its implementation is scheduled for 2015.But a pause thanks to the pressure from the French government.