By Ank Kuipers
PARAMARIBO (Reuters) – The families of Surinamese activists slain for their opposition to the government in the 1980s say decades of suffering and sluggish legal proceedings have been prolonged by the apparent inability of authorities to locate the man at the center of it all: former President Desi Bouterse.
Bouterse, 78, dominated politics in the tiny South American country for decades, leading a coup in 1980 and finally leaving office in 2020.
Five years ago, he and six others were convicted for their role in the 1982 murders of 15 leading government critics, including lawyers, journalists, union leaders, soldiers and university professors.
Bouterse, who had claimed the murdered men were connected to an invasion plot, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The conviction, won partly on the testimony of a union leader who survived the incident at a colonial fortress in capital Paramaribo, was upheld by Suriname’s top court in December, ending more than 16 years of legal maneuvering.
But Bouterse and his former bodyguard Iwan Dijksteel failed to report to prison in January, touching off a manhunt and Interpol Red Notices.
“It’s like you’ve done half a job,” said Aishel Bradley, who was a year old when her uncle Lesley Rahman, a 28-year-old journalist who had pressed Bouterse with questions, was killed in the so-called “December murders.”
“If the verdict includes imprisonment, that’s what should happen,” said Bradley. Her family, many of whom fled Suriname during Bouterse’s tenure, does not yet have closure, she said. “It is very important that the next steps are also followed. And that he is also tracked down and serves his sentence.”
In response to questions from Reuters about what is being done to find the men, Suriname’s prosecutor’s office said it had “no new updates”.
In an April 3 open letter, victims’ families, human rights organizations, a trade union federation and others, asked the prosecutor’s office and President Chan Santokhi to urgently use all resources to track down the men.
RULE OF LAW?
Two uncles of Sunil Oemrawsingh died in the political violence of 1982 – including one, Sugrim Oemrawsingh, in the December murders.
It was “naive” of the country’s prosecutor to invite the men to report to prison, Oemrawsingh said.
“You should always keep an eye on (Bouterse) anyway and in the first place revoke his passport. Because the danger of flight is evident. Well, that didn’t happen,” Oemrawsingh said in a March interview at his home.
The prosecutor’s office has previously said that an appeals process meant Bouterse and his co-defendants were considered suspects, not convicts, blocking confiscation of their passports.
The conviction had been hailed as a triumph for the rule of law in Suriname, a former Dutch colony with a population of about 600,000. But Bouterse’s disappearance has put that in question.
“It wasn’t a real surprise that Bouterse didn’t turn himself in voluntarily,” said Reed Brody, a U.S. war crimes prosecutor who monitored the case for the International Commission of Jurists. “The surprise was that a convicted mass murderer was able to slip away so easily.”
Brody said it was unclear what was being done to locate Bouterse and whether his family or supporters had been interviewed.
“Given Bouterse’s age and his poor health, he would not likely have been able to abscond or to remain hidden so long without the complicity of others,” Brody said.
A leader of Bouterse’s National Democratic Party, which is currently in opposition, told supporters in March authorities “will not find Bouterse,” and that the ex-president was still the party’s chairman.
The situation, family member Oemrawsingh said, “is very painful.”
“Not only personally, but also for Suriname.”
(Reporting by Ank Kuipuers in Paramaribo,; Editing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Rosalba O’Brien)
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