Siegfried Mets, sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug trafficking, is repatriated to the Netherlands after 17 years in prison on humanitarian grounds
JAKARTA: A 74-year-old Dutchman sentenced to death in Indonesia 17 years ago for drug trafficking was released from a Jakarta prison on Monday for repatriation to the Netherlands on humanitarian grounds.
Siegfried Mets walked out of Cipinang prison and headed to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, Indonesian law and human rights official Ahmad Usmarwi Kaffah confirmed.
Mets was due to fly home later Monday, accompanied by fellow Dutch inmate Ali Tokman, 65, who was serving a life sentence for a similar offence and also was granted a reprieve.
The convicted drug smugglers will return home on humanitarian grounds after a deal struck this week between Indonesia and the Dutch government.
The two men “will be flown through Soekarno-Hatta International Airport using a KLM flight at 7:25 pm (1225 GMT), and their detention will be transferred to the Netherlands,” Indonesian official I Nyoman Gede Surya Mataram told a press conference.
Mets and Tokman have been held in Indonesian jails for years after falling foul of the country’s strict narcotics laws.
Mets was sentenced to death in 2008 for smuggling 600,000 ecstasy pills into Indonesia, but his execution had not been carried out.
Tokman was handed a death sentence in 2015 for smuggling more than six kilograms (13 pounds) of the stimulant MDMA. The sentence was later commuted to life.
Dutch deputy ambassador Adriaan Palm told journalists that authorities in The Hague would deliberate on whether the men’s sentences will be continued in the Netherlands.
“Here they fall under the Indonesian law, in the Netherlands they will fall under the Dutch law,” he said.
“After they come back to the Netherlands, then we’ll see what happens next,” he added.
Mets has been suffering from a broken hand, and Tokman from high blood pressure, Jakarta’s human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra has said.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws, but has moved to free several high-profile foreign detainees since last year.
Ministers have generally cited humanitarian reasons for their release, but have also indicated that the transfers could eventually help Jakarta bring back Indonesians detained abroad.
More than 90 foreign nationals were on death row in Indonesia, all for drug convictions, as of early November, according to the immigration and corrections ministry.
Last month, Indonesia deported Lindsay Sandiford, a British grandmother held on death row for more than a decade. – AFP
