JAKARTA, Dec 2 — Indonesia and the Netherlands have signed a deal to repatriate two elderly Dutch prisoners convicted of drug offences, one of whom is on death row.
Indonesian Senior Minister for Law, Human Rights, and Immigration Yusril Ihza Mahendra said they two are Siegfried Mets, 74, and Ali Tokman, 65.
Mets was sentenced to death in Jakarta in 2008 for smuggling and distributing 600,000 ecstasy pills. Tokman was initially given the death penalty in 2015 for smuggling 6kg of methylene dioxy meth amphetamine (MDMA), but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on appeal.
Yusril signed the agreement in Jakarta with Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel, who attended the event virtually.
"In response to the official request by the Dutch Foreign Minister and the request from the King of the Netherlands to President Prabowo Subianto, to which the President responded positively, we will immediately return them home," he told the press after the signing this evening.
Yusril added that Mets had been jailed in Indonesia for 17 years and "is in a poor health condition".
Indonesia has not carried out any executions since 2016, although new death sentences are still issued every year. Mets and Tokman are scheduled to fly from Jakarta to Amsterdam on December 8.
"We are very grateful that Indonesia allows these two Dutch detainees to be closer to their families, and we asked for this for humanitarian reasons," said Dutch Ambassador Marc Gerritsen, adding that the deal underlined strong bilateral relations.
In the past year, Indonesia has repatriated a number of other foreigners on death row or life imprisonment, including a British woman, five Australians, a Frenchman, and a Filipino woman.
