Suriname to try ex-strongman Bouterse for torture and killings

PARAMARIBO, Surinam (Reuters) -- Suriname's highest court has ruled that former military strongman Desi Bouterse must face trial for the 1982 torture and killing of fifteen prominent opponents of his government.

Freddy Kruisland, a lawyer representing the relatives of the 15 victims, told Reuters that he had received the Court of Justice's ruling late on Wednesday.

The verdict "says the public prosecutor must begin the trial of Desi Bouterse and any others who may have been involved in the crimes committed against 15 individuals on December 8, 1982," Kruisland said.

The case revolves around 15 government critics -- journalists, politicians, academics and labor leaders -- who were massacred at the Fort Zeelandia military barracks in the capital Paramaribo in December 1982, when Bouterse was the military strongman in this former Dutch colony on the northeast shoulder of South America.

Bouterse is a former army officer who overthrew governments here in 1980 and 1990. He was elected to the Suriname's National Assembly in May for the first time.

Meanwhile, President Ronald Venetiaan took office in August pledging to investigate human rights violations committed over the past 20 years.

The court ruling comes two weeks after a hearing at which union leaders and relatives of the victims called for Bouterse to be swiftly prosecuted. In December, the statute of limitations on the crime will be up and the state will no longer be allowed to prosecute him.

Bouterse, who was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in jail for drug smuggling by a Dutch appeals court in June, did not attend the hearing but said he was innocent.

"I was not present during the killings, nor did I order them," Bouterse told a later press conference.

The sole survivor of the massacre, union leader and politician Fred Derby, has said that Bouterse was in Fort Zeelandia at the time of the killings and dismissed the strongman's claims that he left before the murders.

"If Mr. Bouterse says people died in the evening of December 8, and tries to find an alibi by saying he was somewhere else ... I have to tell the world that people had already died during the day," Derby said earlier this week.

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Surinamese officials order investigation into political killings
October 26, 2000

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