The Jakarta Globe, January 20, 2014.
A French drug smuggler was freed on parole Monday after more than 14 years in an Indonesian prison, a rare early release of a foreigner that raises hopes for Australian inmate Schapelle Corby.
Michael Blanc was arrested the day after Christmas in 1999 at the airport on the resort island of Bali with 3.8 kilograms of hash hidden in diving canisters.
The 40-year-old, who has always maintained his innocence, was originally given a life sentence under Indonesia’s tough anti-drugs laws, which provoked outrage in his native France.
His sentence was cut to 20 years and he received several remissions. Following a lengthy battle with Indonesia’s complex legal system, he finally succeeded in being granted parole, which is rare for a foreign prisoner.
“He has come out of prison. He has signed his release papers,” his mother Helene Le Touzey told AFP on Monday at the prison in the south of the capital Jakarta.
“I am happy, happy, happy,” added Le Touzey, who abandoned her life in France to move to Indonesia and fight for her son’s release.
After leaving prison mother and son travelled by car to government offices to finalize administrative formalities. Blanc did not comment, with his mother saying he was still in shock.
Blanc has always maintained his innocence, insisting that he was given the diving canisters to transport by a friend.
He was sentenced to life in prison on November 16, 2000, a sentence criticized in France as overly harsh.
It was raised by Paris at the highest levels, with the then-prime minister Francois Fillon bringing it up during a visit to Indonesia in 2011.
Blanc’s sentence was cut in December 2008 to 20 years in prison thanks in large part to his mother’s efforts.
Le Touzey in 2011 started the process to get her son granted parole but her efforts ran into problems.
Indonesian law does not usually allow foreigners to be released on parole after serving two-thirds of their sentence, which is the norm with Indonesian prisoners.
“I could not accept that. The law must be the same for all,” she said in an earlier interview.
This hurdle was finally overcome, with authorities allowing Blanc to be freed as long as he remains in Indonesia until the end of his sentence on July 21, 2017.
Talking to AFP shortly before her son’s release, Le Touzey said she had “made his bed” to welcome him home.
“There have been real highs and lows but it’s really a great relief,” she said, before heading to the prison to collect her son.
Blanc is the first foreigner to be freed on parole in Indonesia in recent years, and his release will boost hopes for Corby.
Bali’s corrections board in August recommended Corby for early release from the island’s notorious Kerobokan jail. But the process has run into a series of bureaucratic hurdles.
Corby was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2005 for smuggling 4.1 kg of marijuana into Bali the previous year. She has received several remissions and a sentence cut of five years from the president.
( No sooner one idiot Frenchman gets out and another takes his place)
Frenchman Allegedly Caught With 3 Kilos of Meth Faces Death in Bali,
Denpasar. A French national faces the death penalty after allegedly attempting to smuggle three kilograms of crystal methamphetamine in the lining of his suitcase through customs at Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport, police said.
Francois Jacques Giuliy, 48, was arrested at the airport after customs officers allegedly discovered two large bags of crystal meth lining the walls of his suitcase. He arrived in the country on a Malaysian Airlines flight from Abu Dhabi that had a layover in Kuala Lumpur. Investigators are working to determine the source and eventual destination of the drugs, Ngurah Rai customs chief Made Wijaya said in a press conference on Monday.
“We’re still questioning the suspect to reveal the origin of the crystal meth and where it is destined to be delivered, as well as his [possible] network in Indonesia,” Wijaya said.
A beaming Wijaya displayed the seized narcotics to the assembled crowd on Monday, holding up one of the large bags as Giuliy, dressed in an orange polo shirt marked “perpetrator” and lacking the requisite mask associated with drug busts, sat stone-faced at a table bearing his name. The bags weighed a combined 3,083 grams — well beyond the five-gram cutoff for a capital offense under Indonesia’s harsh drug laws.
“[The] crystal meth carried by the suspect is worth Rp 6.1 billion ($506,300), assuming that the price of each gram on the narcotics black market is worth Rp 2 million,” Wijaya said.
The estimate is in-line with prices listed by the black market aggregator havocscope.com, which tracks the local cost of a variety of goods sold on the global black market. According to the website, crystal meth fetches $203.80 per gram in Indonesia.
Giuliy is the second French national to be detained on drug charges in Bali since the start of the year. Police arrested 46-year-old Thierry Verchere on Jan. 9 for cocaine possession and distribution during a raid on a North Kuta, Badung district, Denpasar, home. Officers stormed the home of Evi Nugraheni after being informed of an alleged drug transaction going down at the Jalan Gunung Tangkuban Perahu residence. They discovered an undisclosed amount of marijuana and crystal meth at Evi’s home and were searching the building when Verchere allegedly walked in with a bag of cocaine.
Police allegedly seized 112 grams of cocaine from Verchere and arrested the man. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.
As the two men face the possibility of serving hard time at an Indonesian prison, another French national walked free on Monday after serving 14 years on drug charges. Forty-year-old Michael Blanc, who was sentenced to life in prison, was released on parole on Monday after receiving a substantial sentence cut by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2008 that reduced his life sentence to 20 years.
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di 21 jan 2014 - 0:23
