JAKARTA, Indonesia — Encouraged perhaps by the return of convicted overseas Filipina worker (OFW) Mary Jane Veloso to the Philippines, France has followed suit by requesting Indonesian authorities to transfer a countryman who has been imprisoned in death row on drug charges for nearly 20 years.

French national Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old welder from Metz in France's northeastern Grand Etz region, was arrested in 2005 in a drugs factory outside Jakarta where authorities accused him of being one of the laboratory's chemist 'cooking' the illegal drugs.

Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers and has executed foreigners in the past. But reports showed that most of those convicted were actually innocent victims who unfortunately got involved unknowingly with notorious drug traffickers who used them either as 'mules' or had marital relationships with them.

In the past month or so, the Indonesian government has agreed to transfer a series of high-profile foreign detainees in death row, including Veloso and the last five members of the infamous drug ring known as ‘Bali Nine’.

“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui,” senior Indonesian law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra disclosed in an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Yusril added that the request from the French government would be discussed in “early January” after the holidays.

Similar with Veloso's case, Atlaoui has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant which he did not know was a drug laboratory.
He was initially sentenced to life imprisonment, but the Indonesian Supreme Court increased the sentence to death on appeal in 2007.

Despite ongoing negotiations for prisoner transfers, the Indonesian government recently signaled that it will resume executions—on hiatus since 2016—of drug convicts on death row.