PARIS, July 16, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A Frenchman who spent almost two decades on death row in Indonesia over drug offences before being returned to France, has been granted a conditional release, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old welder from Metz, was flown back to France in February after being on death row in Indonesia since 2007.

The father of four, currently incarcerated near Paris, had his sentence adapted by the French courts to 30 years imprisonment.

Atlaoui has been approved for conditional release on July 18, the prosecutor's office in Meaux said in a statement, adding that it is subject to follow-up obligations.

"It has been a very long battle, there was no question of me giving up at any moment. This is a very great moment for me today, and it will be for him as soon as he is released," his lawyer Richard Sedillot told AFP.

Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 at a factory in a Jakarta suburb where dozens of kilos (pounds) of drugs were discovered and accused of being a "chemist" by the authorities.

He has always denied being a drug trafficker, saying that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylic factory.

Initially sentenced to life in prison, his sentence was reviewed by the Indonesia's supreme court and changed to death on appeal.

He was due to be executed alongside eight others in 2015, but was granted a reprieve after Paris applied pressure and the Indonesian authorities allowed an outstanding appeal to proceed.

Indonesia, which has some of the world's toughest drug laws, has recently released several high-profile detainees, including a Filipina mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called "Bali Nine" drug ring.