Suriname’s convicted former president Bouterse will not report to jail, says wife
/ Our Today
administrator
PARAMARIBO (Reuters)
Suriname’s former president Desi Bouterse will not report to jail, his wife said on Friday (January 12), after he was asked by prosecutors to turn himself in to serve his sentence for involvement in the murder of 15 activists more than 40 years ago.
A three-judge panel in December affirmed the convictions of Bouterse and four others in the 1982 execution of the government critics, including lawyers, journalists, union leaders, soldiers and university professors.
“He’s not going to turn himself in,” the former president’s wife, Ingrid Bouterse-Waldring, told journalists near their home in Paramaribo.
Bouterse, 78, dominated politics in the former Dutch colony for decades and left office in 2020. He denied the charge but was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Asked if efforts were taking place to track down Bouterse, prosecutor’s office spokesperson Joelle Zaalman told Reuters: “Due to strategic considerations, no answer to this question.”
Current President Chan Santokhi investigated the so-called “December murders” as a police commissioner and later, as justice minister, pushed for the case to move ahead.
The court ruled in 2019 that Bouterse had overseen an operation in which soldiers abducted 16 leading government critics, murdering all but one of them at a colonial fortress in the capital Paramaribo.
One trade union leader survived and testified against Bouterse, who seized power in a 1980 coup against Suriname’s first prime minister just five years after independence.
Bouterse has said in the past the murdered men were connected to an invasion plot involving the Netherlands and the United States.
One other man convicted alongside Bouterse also failed to report to prison, the prosecutor’s office said.
Bouterse’s failure to show up is not a surprise, said Sunil Oemrawsingh, a relative of one of the victims and president of advocacy group ‘Foundation December 8, 1982’.
“It would be a bad thing though, that the prosecutor’s office did not keep an eye on convicted murderers,” he said.
Comments