Former Surinamese president Desi Bouterse will not report to the prison in Paramaribo on Friday, as the Public Prosecution Service had instructed. His wife announced this to the press at his house on Friday morning local time, where about a hundred supporters had also gathered. Bouterse had to report at 1 p.m. Dutch time to serve a twenty-year prison sentence.
Bouterse’s wife says she does not know where he is either. Bouterse was convicted in December for his role in the December murders, a series of political liquidations in 1982. A cell is under construction especially for Bouterse (78) near a military hospital. He would have to be housed here due to medical problems.
Irvin Kanhai, the lawyer for Bouterse and other convicts in the case surrounding the December murders, said on Thursday afternoon that his clients planned to report on Friday. “I can tell you that my clients law obedient servants (law-abiding servants),” Kanhai said. “With that I have told you everything.”
Bouterse’s lawyers have requested the Surinamese Public Prosecution Service not to execute the sentence. They invoked an amnesty law intended to allow those involved in the December murders to go free. However, the court-martial decided in 2016 that the law does not apply, and in 2021 the Constitutional Court annulled the law.
Bouterse said in the week after his conviction that he was engaged in “negotiations” with the government. According to the former president, senior government officials wanted to offer him a “soft landing”. The government categorically denied it.
With the collaboration of Nina Jurna.
This message is being supplemented.
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