Indonesia has received a request from France to transfer the ailing French death row inmate Serge Atlaoui imprisoned since 2004, officials said on Saturday.
The 61-year-old French national has been held in Indonesia on drug charges as the authorities accused him of being a “chemist”.
“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui on 19 December 2024. The letter was sent on behalf of the French minister of justice,” senior Indonesian law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told Agence France-Presse.
The request would be discussed in “early January” after the holidays, the minister said.
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.
Earlier this month, he made a last-ditch plea to be returned home, Indonesian authorities said at a time the new administration of president Prabowo Subianto planned to give pardon to 44,000 inmates nationwide.
The father of four, who turned 61 last week 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 Mr Mahendra.
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 to 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 last week.
In the case of Atlaoui, Mr 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 of 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”.