Gail Alexan­der

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj will be re­leased from prison in Suri­name af­ter courts in that coun­try found the Suri­namese po­lice had no ba­sis to keep him.

But he will re­main in Suri­name un­til a tri­al is sched­uled in the bank fraud al­le­ga­tions against for­mer Suri­namese Post Sav­ings Bank CEO Gin­mar­do Kro­mosoe­to. This is ex­pect­ed in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

This was con­firmed by Ram­samooj's wife Camille Pagee.

Re­ports by Suri­name's De Ware Tidj on­line ser­vice stat­ed Ram­samooj will be re­leased by or­der of the Court of Jus­tice.

Ra­masamooj was de­tained Oc­to­ber 8 af­ter be­ing told by Suri­namese Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vices that they want­ed a state­ment or ev­i­dence to sup­port an in­quiry in­to op­er­a­tions at the SPSB and he agreed to as­sist. A probe in­to SPSB has been on­go­ing since 2019.

When the de­ten­tion con­tin­ued with­out charge Ram­samooj, who is di­a­bet­ic, threat­ened to go on a hunger strike. He de­clared he wasn't guilty of any crim­i­nal of­fence.

Pagee said his de­ten­tion by po­lice on stat­ed sus­pi­cions of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the CEO of a state bank in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties was chal­lenged by his lawyer un­der that coun­try's Ar­ti­cle 61 of the crim­i­nal code.

Po­lice in Suri­name have wide pow­ers to de­tain with­out ev­i­dence, but Ar­ti­cle 61 re­quires them, af­ter a cer­tain time with­out pro­duc­ing charges, to prove to the courts that sus­pi­cions have been sub­stan­ti­at­ed.

|The court found they were not," Pagee said.