Frenchman Serge Atlaoui loses appeal against execution in Indonesia

Serge Atlaoui, Frenchman on death row, with wife Sabine Atlaoui during one of her visits at Nusakambangan prison island. Photo: AFP

Jakarta: The Indonesian Attorney-General's office has said no executions will be held in Indonesia in the near future despite Frenchman Serge Atlaoui losing his appeal on Monday.

Atlaoui, 51, was due to be executed with Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in April, but won an eleventh hour reprieve because his appeal had not been heard in the Administrative Court.

He was contesting President Joko Widodo's rejection of his clemency plea, on the grounds he unilaterally rejected the pleas of all drug felons on death rather than considering the merits of each case.

But on Monday the Administrative Court upheld an earlier ruling in April that clemency is the prerogative of the president and the court does not have the authority to rule on it.

"Therefore we reject the appeal by the applicant and we uphold our decision of April 9, 2015," said presiding judge Ujang Abdullah.

Indonesian Attorney-General spokesman Tony Spontana said after the decision that no executions were planned in the near future. "No meetings on it have been held so far," he said.

Atlaoui's lawyer, Nancy Yuliana, said she regretted the decision but was not surprised.

Lawyers for Chan and Sukumaran had lodged similar legal challenges in the Administrative Court which had been rejected on the same grounds.

"We will inform the family and we will think of another legal way. We don't know yet," Ms Yuliana said.

Atlaoui, a welder and father of five, was arrested near Jakarta in 2005 in a meth lab at Tangerang, west of Jakarta.

He has always maintained his innocence and insisted he was merely installing equipment in what he thought was an acrylics factory.

Atlaoui was arrested with 17 others, several of whom have also been sentenced to death.

However he is the first to face the firing squad even though it was only his third day at the factory.

His legal team argue he cannot be executed alone because Indonesia requires that all those who have committed a crime must be punished together.

But the Attorney-General's spokesman, Mr Spontana, said Atlaoui could still be executed in isolation from the others.

"He can be executed separately despite committing the crime with the other perpetrators because their legal dossiers and convictions were made individually," Mr Spontana said.