Getty PhotosA French nationwide held on dying row in Indonesia since 2007 for drug offences has left jail to return to France as a part of an settlement made between each international locations.
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was accused of being a “chemist” by Indonesian authorities and arrested in 2005 at a manufacturing facility in Jakarta, the place dozens of kilos (kilos) of medicine have been discovered.
An settlement was made between Indonesia and France on 24 January to extradite the father-of-four on “humanitarian grounds” as a result of he has most cancers and has been receiving weekly remedy at a hospital.
“It is a miracle,” his spouse Sabine Atlaoui instructed France’s RTL radio. “He survived 19 years of incarceration. He survived an execution.”
The 61-year-old will probably be handed over to French police at Soekarno-Hatta Worldwide Airport in Jakarta, earlier than boarding a business flight to Paris.
Upon returning, Atlaoui will probably be introduced to prosecutors “and almost definitely detained whereas awaiting a call”, Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot instructed AFP.
Atlaoui instructed his household he doesn’t wish to meet them on the airport, his spouse mentioned.
“He desires to see his household once more when he’s free,” she instructed RTL. “Sadly, we have no idea how lengthy it should take.”
In France, the utmost punishment for the same crime is 30 years, Indonesia human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra instructed Reuters.
Will probably be as much as Paris to grant “clemency, amnesty or a lowered sentence”, he mentioned.
Getty PhotosAtlaoui, a welder from Metz in north-eastern France, has at all times denied being a drug trafficker.
He claimed to be putting in equipment in an acrylic manufacturing facility, however instructed AFP in 2015 he “thought there was one thing suspicious”.
Initially sentenced to life in jail, the decision was modified to dying on enchantment by the Indonesian supreme court docket.
His execution was scheduled for 2015, however paused due to strain from the French authorities.