Suriname president convicted of killings, sentenced to 20 years

PARAMARIBO, Suriname (AP):

A court in the South American country of Suriname convicted President Desi Bouterse on Friday of the 1982 killings of 15 political opponents and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

The decision by a panel of three judges marks the end of a historic trial that began in November 2007, although it was not immediately clear what happens next.

Bouterse is currently on an official trip in China and could not be immediately reached for comment. He had previously accepted “political responsibility” for the killings but insisted he was not present.

Hugo Essed, a lawyer for relatives of the victims, said Bouterse should step down immediately.

“It’s a shame for him to remain as president,” he said.

The case is known in Suriname as the ‘December killings’, and the victims included some of the most prominent citizens of the country. Bouterse and 25 co-defendants are accused of rounding them up and executing them inside a colonial fortress in the capital, Paramaribo.

Bouterse was the military leader of Suriname from 1980 to 1987. He was elected president in a parliamentary vote in 2010 and re-elected in 2015. Shortly after he was elected, he pushed through an amnesty law that was ruled unconstitutional. Then in 2016, he directed Suriname’s attorney general to immediately halt the legal proceedings against him, but the court ruled he could not do so because they had already started.

Bouterse was previously convicted by a court in the Netherlands in absentia of drug trafficking in 1999 but cannot be extradited under Surinamese law.