Indonesia, Dutch sign deal to repatriate two convicts, one on death row

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JAKARTA, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Indonesia and the Netherlands on Tuesday signed a deal to repatriate two elderly Dutch prisoners convicted of drug offences, officials said, one of whom was on death row.

The two prisoners were Siegfried Mets, 74, and Ali Tokman, 65, according to Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Indonesia’s senior minister for law, human rights and immigration.

Mets was sentenced to death in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta in 2008 for smuggling and distributing 600,000 ecstasy pills. Tokman was initially given the death penalty in 2015 for smuggling 6 kilograms of Metheylene 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,” Yusril told reporters after the signing late on Tuesday.

Mets had been jailed in Indonesia for 17 years and “is in a poor health condition,” Yusril said.

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 to Amsterdam from Jakarta on December 8, he added.

“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 French man and a Filipino woman.

(Reporting by Ananda Teresia; editing by Mark Heinrich)