Desi Bouterse and four co-convicts will not submit a request for clemency to Surinamese President Chan Santokhi. His lawyer Irvin Kanhai announced this on Friday. In a interview with the Suriname Herald Kanhai calls a request for clemency a losing match: “You know you are going to lose that (…) case, so why are you submitting a request?”
According to his lawyer, the former president and former army leader Bouterse (78) is calm under the prospect of twenty years of captivity. As soon as the Public Prosecution Service makes contact, lawyer Kanhai will indicate when Bouterse and his other four clients can start serving their sentences.
On December 20, Bouterse was sentenced on appeal to twenty years in prison for his role in the December murders of 1982. Fifteen opponents of his military rule were tortured and executed at the time. The elderly ex-soldiers Benny Brondenstein, Stephanus Dendoe, Iwan Dijksteel and Ernst Geffery have been sentenced to fifteen years.
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Bouterse has always been a prisoner of his tainted past