A French national sentenced to death for smuggling drugs to Indonesia has had his sentence commuted to 19 years in prison by an appeals court in West Nusa Tenggara, in a decision deemed rare in a country known to have some of the world’s strictest drug laws. The Mataram High Court overturned on Monday the death penalty previously handed down by the Mataram District Court against Felix Dorfin, 35, after he was found guilty in May of smuggling drugs totaling 2.77 kilograms to Lombok. Besides sentencing him to 19 years in prison — lower than prosecutors’ demand of 20 years — the panel of judges at the high court also ordered Dorfin to pay a fine of Rp 10 billion (US$ 704,970). “Thank God, [Felix] has escaped the death penalty,” Dorfin’s lawyer Denny Nur Indra told The Jakarta Post on Friday in response to the ruling. Dorfin was foun...