France requests transfer of death row convict held in Indonesia — minister
JAKARTA, Indonesia — France has asked Indonesia to transfer a French death row convict, who has been jailed for drug crimes in the Asian nation since 2005, a senior Indonesian minister told AFP on Friday.
Indonesia is in discussion with three countries, including France, over the return of several high-profile detainees and aims to transfer the prisoners by the end of December.
"The French embassy has delivered a letter from France's justice minister to Indonesia's law minister dated November 4 containing a request for the transfer of a French prisoner named Serge Atlaoui," senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told AFP in a message.
The French embassy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
A French diplomat in Paris acknowledged that talks with Jakarta about Atlaoui were underway.
"French authorities are monitoring the situation of Mr Serge Atlaoui. We are in contact with the Indonesian authorities on this matter," the diplomat told AFP.
Atlaoui, a welder, was arrested in 2005 in a secret drugs factory outside Jakarta, with authorities accusing him of being a "chemist" at the site.
But the 60-year-old father of four has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.
He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but the Supreme Court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.
Atlaoui was held on the island of Nusakambangan in Central Java, known as Indonesia's "Alcatraz", following the death sentence, but he was transferred to the city of Tangerang, west of Jakarta, in 2015 ahead of his appeal.
That year, he was due to be executed alongside eight other drug offenders but won a temporary reprieve after Paris stepped up pressure, with Indonesian authorities agreeing to let an outstanding appeal run its course.
In the appeal, Atlaoui's lawyers argued that then-president Joko Widodo did not properly consider his case as he rejected Atlaoui's plea for clemency -- typically a death row convict's last chance to avoid the firing squad.
The court, however, upheld its previous decision that it did not have the jurisdiction to hear a challenge over the clemency plea.
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