JAKARTA, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Two elderly Dutch prisoners convicted of drug offences are set to leave Indonesia for the Netherlands on Monday, officials said, after both nations signed a repatriation deal last week.
Siegfried Mets, 74, and Ali Tokman, 65, are the latest foreigners to be reprieved in the last year from death row or life terms in Indonesia, following five Australians, a British woman, a French man and a Philippine woman.
Indonesia’s law ministry handed them to representatives of the Dutch embassy in a jail ceremony, after the pact in which the Southeast Asian nation agreed to allow the return for humanitarian reasons.
“This transfer is part of law enforcement and humanitarian cooperation based on an official request from the Dutch government and then approved by the Indonesian authorities,” said ministry official I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram.
Mets and Tokman are set to fly to Amsterdam from an airport in Jakarta, the capital, at 7.30 p.m. (0030 GMT), he said at a press conference after the handover.
Wearing green shirts and masks, the men were silent as they sat behind officials at the conference, where Adriaan Palm, the Dutch deputy ambassador to Indonesia, expressed gratitude for a step that reflected good ties between the two countries.
It was not immediately clear if they would serve time on their return home.
Both had received the death penalty, Mets in 2008, for smuggling and distributing 600,000 ecstasy pills, and Tokman in 2015, for smuggling 6 kg (13 lb) of Methylene Dioxy Meth Amphetamine (MDMA).
But the latter had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment on appeal.
Both were in good condition before their departure, though the ministry said in a statement Mets received medical treatment for a fracture sustained in a fall, while Tokman had a history of hypertension.
(Reporting by Ananda Teresia; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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