The In­ter­na­tion­al Po­lice (IN­TER­POL) has placed for­mer Suri­name pres­i­dent De­si Bouterse on its Red No­tice list, near­ly three months af­ter he was sen­tenced to 20 years in jail for mur­der.

He is on the IN­TER­POL list with pho­to, age and ap­pear­ance de­scrip­tion. Po­lice here is­sued an ar­rest no­tice for the con­vict­ed for­mer pres­i­dent on Jan­u­ary 17.

A ‘Red No­tice’ is an of­fi­cial re­quest to law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties world­wide to lo­cate and pro­vi­sion­al­ly ar­rest an in­di­vid­ual pend­ing ex­tra­di­tion, sur­ren­der or sim­i­lar le­gal ac­tion. It is based on an ar­rest or court or­der is­sued by the ju­di­cial au­thor­i­ties in the re­quest­ing coun­try.

But, the where­abouts of Bouterse, 78, re­mains a mys­tery af­ter he first failed to keep his sched­uled ap­point­ment in Jan­u­ary to re­port to the prison in San­to Bo­ma just south of the cap­i­tal, Para­mari­bo.

In Jan­u­ary, the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (OM) an­nounced that it was in the process of is­su­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al ar­rest war­rant for the for­mer pres­i­dent af­ter he failed for a sec­ond time to re­port to a lo­cal prison.

Bouterse, who was not present when the Court of Jus­tice had is­sued the rul­ing in De­cem­ber last year, had ap­pealed against his con­vic­tion that had been hand­ed down in Au­gust 2021, when the Court Mar­tial of Suri­name up­held the 2019 mil­i­tary court rul­ing of a 20-year-jail term fol­low­ing a tri­al that had been go­ing on for sev­er­al years.

In 2017, Bouterse, along with 23 co-de­fen­dants ap­peared in the mil­i­tary court af­ter the Court of Jus­tice had ear­li­er re­ject­ed a mo­tion to stop the tri­al. The for­mer mil­i­tary of­fi­cers and civil­ians had been charged with the De­cem­ber 8, 1982, mur­ders of the 15 men which in­clud­ed jour­nal­ists, mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, union lead­ers, lawyers, busi­ness­men and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers.

The pros­e­cu­tion had al­leged that the men were ar­rest­ed on the nights of De­cem­ber 7 and 8, and trans­ferred to Fort Zee­landia, the then head­quar­ters of the Suri­namese Na­tion­al Army. They said the men were tor­tured and sum­mar­i­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

Three of the co-con­vict­ed re­tired sol­diers, Ernst Gef­ferie, 81, Stephanus Den­doe 68 and Ben­ny Bron­den­stein 68, all re­port­ed to prison. But Bouterse’s body­guard, Iwan Dijk­steel, has al­so not re­port­ed to the prison to be­gin serv­ing his 15-year sen­tence.

The OM an­nounced on Tues­day night that it had of­fi­cial­ly ini­ti­at­ed the process of us­ing In­ter­pol to track down Bouterse and Dijk­steel.

It is al­so call­ing on the pub­lic to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about the where­abouts of Bouterse and Dijk­steel, adding that per­sons with rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion should con­tact the Mil­i­tary Po­lice Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment.

Po­lice in the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try have since launched a search for both Bouterse and Dijk­steel, even as the main op­po­si­tion Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDC), which the for­mer pres­i­dent heads, main­tains that the tri­al was po­lit­i­cal and di­rect­ed by The Nether­lands.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Mar 13, CMC – 

CMC/af/ir/2024