Jakarta Globe – AFP, Mar 06, 2015
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| Serge Atlaoui, a Frenchman on death row, is seen with his wife Sabine Atlaoui during a visit at Nusakambangan prison island in this 2008 file photo. (AFP Photo/Bay Ismoyo) |
Cilacap,
Central Java. The wife of a Frenchman on death row in Indonesia says she
refuses to believe she has seen him for the last time, as fears grow he will
soon be executed with a group of foreigners.
Serge
Atlaoui has been detained on Indonesia’s notorious Nusakambangan prison island
in Central Java since he was sentenced to death in 2007 on drugs charges.
The
Frenchman, 51, had his appeal for clemency rejected in January by President
Joko Widodo, a vocal supporter of capital punishment for drug offenders.
Atlaoui was
joined this week on the island by two Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan
and Myuran Sukumaran, whose transfer from Bali signals their execution date,
and that of several other foreigners, is drawing near.
The other
foreigners are drug convicts from Brazil, the Philippines, Ghana and Nigeria.
They all recently lost their requests for presidential clemency and are
expected to be put to death at the same time soon.
Atlaoui’s
wife Sabine visited him in prison this week and refused to believe it will be
her last, as she pins all her hope on a legal challenge for a stay of
execution.
“Yes, of
course we are worried,” she told AFP in Cilacap, the port town where family
must wait before visiting Nusakambangan. “But we’ve got this judicial review
that has been lodged, and we do hope that through this process, the truth can
be revealed.”
Atlaoui, a
father of four, was arrested near Jakarta in 2005 in a secret laboratory
producing ecstasy.
Imprisoned
in Indonesia for ten years, he has always denied the charges saying he was
installing industrial machinery in what he thought was an acrylics factory.
Urgent
legal action
Atlaoui had
never lodged a judicial review of his sentence until this year, when the sudden
execution in January of six prisoners — including five foreigners — prompted
the family to begin urgent legal action.
Sabine
Atlaoui said her husband’s case was different from Chan and Sukumaran, as he
was applying for his first judicial review.
The
Australians’ application for a review last month, a second attempt by the pair,
was rejected. They also lost a subsequent challenge to the president’s
rejection of their appeals for clemency, a decision they are now appealing in
court.
But
Indonesia’s attorney-general has stressed that the failed attempts at
presidential pardons were the last chance to avoid execution.
Unlike the
families of the Australian prisoners, Sabine Atlaoui has made the journey
countless times and understands their anxiety as speculation mounts about the
fate of their loved ones.
“As
families, we are all enduring a very traumatic situation. Here we are, with our
emotions, our pain and our fear,” she said.
Her husband
is detained at a separate maximum security prison to the Australians, who are
being held in solitary confinement elsewhere on “Indonesia’s Alcatraz.”
The
execution of a Dutch and a Brazilian prisoner in January prompted those
governments to recall their ambassadors in fury, but Joko has vowed to maintain
a tough line on drug smugglers.
Sabine
Atlaoui said her husband was fully aware of the political situation, adding the
executions this year had stoked fears inside the prison as inmates were led
away to be shot.
But when
the family was reunited this week — including three of Atlaoui’s four children
and two siblings who had never before visited him in prison — she said everyone
put those thoughts aside momentarily.
“The
atmosphere was really intense, there was laughter, feelings were so strong we
could forget everything that was around us,” she said. “Suddenly when we went
through the exit … we came back to the reality of the prison world. It’s
still hard for me to believe.”
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