The Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (OM) is in­sist­ing that for­mer pres­i­dent De­si Bouterse be jailed for 20 years for his in­volve­ment in the mur­der of 15 peo­ple in the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try on De­cem­ber 8, 1982.

But Bouterse’s at­tor­ney, Irvin Kan­hai, has asked the Court of Jus­tice to ac­quit his client.

He said the pros­e­cu­tion and court-mar­tial have “un­for­tu­nate­ly con­tin­ued to re­peat a sto­ry of mur­der­ous sol­diers and in­no­cent vic­tims, who were killed in a most bru­tal way be­cause they did not want the dic­ta­tor­ship of the mil­i­tary and want­ed to bring about a re­turn to democ­ra­cy”.

In Au­gust 2021, the Court Mar­tial of Suri­name up­held the 2019 mil­i­tary court rul­ing of a 20-year jail term on Bouterse fol­low­ing a tri­al that had been go­ing on for sev­er­al years.

In 2017, Bouterse along with 23 co-de­fen­dants had ap­peared in the Mil­i­tary Court af­ter the Court of Jus­tice had ear­li­er re­ject­ed a mo­tion to stop the tri­al.

On Tues­day, act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Astrid Ni­a­mut re­it­er­at­ed ear­li­er ar­gu­ments that Bouterse, who was the mil­i­tary ruler of the coun­try at the time of the mur­ders, must be held re­spon­si­ble for the killings and that enough ev­i­dence had been pro­vid­ed dur­ing the tri­al.

She ar­gued dur­ing the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against Bouterse and co-de­fen­dants Ernst Gef­fery, Iwan Dijk­steel, Stephanus Sen­sor and Ben­ny Bron­den­stein that this is why the Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice al­so de­mand­ed Bouterse’s im­pris­on­ment.

The act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said that Bouterse has nev­er ex­pressed re­gret to the rel­a­tives of the vic­tims. Nor did he him­self want to pro­vide any in­sight in­to what ex­act­ly hap­pened on De­cem­ber 8, 1982.

The for­mer mil­i­tary of­fi­cers and civil­ians had been charged with the De­cem­ber 8, 1982, mur­ders of 15 men that 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.

The Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice ar­gued that Bouterse, who al­so served as head of state from 2010-2020, act­ed with pre­med­i­ta­tion and that there was suf­fi­cient time dur­ing vic­tims be­ing shot and their bod­ies col­lect­ed for him to have thought about the killings.

The pros­e­cu­tion ar­gued that the pris­on­ers were not all killed at the same time, but at dif­fer­ent times.

“Every­thing points to calm de­lib­er­a­tion and calm de­lib­er­a­tion,” the pros­e­cu­tor said, not­ing the fact that Bouterse had stat­ed on ra­dio and TV that the vic­tims had been shot while flee­ing, but that the court was lat­er told the killings took place when the lead­er­ship of the mil­i­tary was in the hands of Paul Bhag­wan­das shows the “cool­ness of the ac­cused ”

Un­like pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, Bouterse ar­rived ear­ly at the court build­ing telling re­porters that he had come to lis­ten to the mat­ter as a cour­tesy to the pros­e­cu­tion.

“Peo­ple are try­ing to present the mat­ter dif­fer­ent­ly from what the ac­tu­al sit­u­a­tion has been. The OM does not un­der­stand what is go­ing on at all. They put the em­pha­sis wrong,” he told re­porters.

Kan­hai, says he is “tired of the per­se­cu­tion’s crazi­ness.

“I’m tired of lis­ten­ing to the per­se­cu­tion’s crazi­ness. If you look at the case on its mer­its, so far in all the pro­ceed­ings there has been no clar­i­ty about what hap­pened in the fort on De­cem­ber 7, 8 and 9, 1982. Ab­solute­ly no clar­i­ty has come.

“The clar­i­ty has not come be­cause you should not as­sume that sol­diers have to prac­tice shoot­ing some­one from two me­ters away. As a sol­dier, you don’t need a drill for that. So some­thing hap­pened that we can’t ex­plain and we didn’t make any ef­fort to ex­plain it.

“So when I hear the pros­e­cu­tion of­fi­cer say that there were shoot­ing ex­er­cis­es… well that’s on his laugh­able, to say the least. Be­cause as a sol­dier you ab­solute­ly do not have to prac­tice shoot­ing some­one from two me­ters away. A child of five can do that too,” the lawyer told re­porters.

The streets lead­ing to the cour­t­house were, as al­ways, cor­doned off and guard­ed by se­cu­ri­ty forces.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, CMC