The Surinamese Public Prosecution Service has a judicial preliminary investigation into the murder of Narcotics inspector Herman Gooding. Surinamese media reported that. Gooding was murdered on August 5, 1990, his corpse was found at night in the center of Paramaribo near Fort Zeelandia. At the time, the controversial murder led to street protests of thousands of Surinamese in Paramaribo.
According to a recent reconstruction in NRC, then army leader (and the later president) Desi Bouterse would have ordered the murder of Gooding. The organization would have been in the hands of Melvin Linscheer, a high intelligence officer. Until recently, Linscheer was a safety adviser of the recently resigned President Chan Santokhi. Linscheer has denied involvement in the murder towards this newspaper.
At the time, Gooding conducted research into major drug matters as the head of the Special offenses department, which also included military involvement. Bouterse, who died at the end of last year, was sentenced in absentia in the Netherlands to eleven years in prison in the Netherlands for cocaine smuggling.
The Surinamese OM reports in a press release that “the claim for the initiation of a judicial preliminary investigation” has been submitted to the examining magistrate. This means that further investigation is being carried out into the facts and circumstances of the case. “The Public Prosecution Service considers this necessary in the context of finding of truth.”
A Surinamese coldcase team had reopened the Gooding case last year. At the time, an investigation into the murder had already been initiated, but that remained without result because cooperation was refused. The then Minister of Justice said that the investigation had been hit on a “blind wall”. The leader of the Surinamese cold case unit said in June that “a bulky file” had been sent to the OM and that around 25 people were heard. He spoke of a “brutal murder.”