For­mer Suri­namese pres­i­dent De­si Bouterse, 79, died on Tues­day fol­low­ing a short ill­ness, well placed sources have con­firmed.

They said that he died at his hid­ing place and that the body has since been trans­ferred to the cap­i­tal, Para­mari­bo.

The fam­i­ly has not yet an­nounced the death, but sev­er­al mem­bers of his Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP) as well as close fam­i­ly friends have con­firmed his death. Mem­bers of the NDP have gath­ered at the par­ty cen­tre in Gey­ersvli­jt to com­fort each oth­er and await the for­mal an­nounce­ment.

Bouterse first came to pow­er when he and 15 oth­er sol­diers of the Na­tion­al Army car­ried out a suc­cess­ful coup on Feb­ru­ary 25, 1980, de­pos­ing the de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Henck Ar­ron. The coup was wel­comed by large parts of so­ci­ety and the mil­i­tary rulers ini­tial­ly re­ceived sup­port from left-wing po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

Bouterse ruled from the time of his seizure of pow­er as chair­man of the then Pol­i­cy Cen­tre as de fac­to head of gov­ern­ment un­til the elec­tions of 25 No­vem­ber 1987 when the Front for Democ­ra­cy and De­vel­op­ment (NPS, VHP and KT­PI), led by Ar­ron, achieved a re­sound­ing vic­to­ry win­ning won 40 of the 51 seats in par­lia­ment.

How­ev­er, this de­feat did not di­min­ish the po­lit­i­cal pow­er of Bouterse and the mil­i­tary. He re­mained com­man­der of the Na­tion­al Army and on De­cem­ber 24, 1990, the army staged an­oth­er coup af­ter Bouterse had clashed with the gov­ern­ment led by Pres­i­dent Ram­se­wak Shankar

The so-called ‘tele­phone coup’ was ac­com­pa­nied by the threat of an ar­moured car at In­de­pen­dence Square, the bar­rel of which was aimed at the Pres­i­den­tial Palace, where Shankar had his of­fice.

Jo­han Kraag was then elect­ed pres­i­dent with the co­op­er­a­tion of then VHP and par­lia­men­tary chair­man Jager­nath Lach­mon, and Jules Wi­j­den­bosch be­came vice-pres­i­dent.

The sub­se­quent elec­tions that were held in 1991 were again lost by Bouterse and the NDP and Ronald Vene­ti­aan be­came pres­i­dent. Af­ter the 1996 elec­tions, the NDP did come to pow­er, af­ter some of the VHP as­sem­bly mem­bers and the KT­PI broke away from the New Front and en­tered in­to a con­ven­tion with the NDP.

Bouterse then put Jules Wi­j­den­bosch for­ward, who was elect­ed pres­i­dent and in May 2000, Wi­j­den­bosch held ear­ly elec­tions af­ter weeks of pub­lic demon­stra­tions against his failed eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.

The New Front then came back to of­fice and Bouterse had to wait un­til 2010 to be elect­ed pres­i­dent, Bouterse was re-elect­ed as pres­i­dent for a sec­ond term in 2015.

But Bouterse and his body­guard, Iwan Dijk­steel, had been on the run from jus­tice since De­cem­ber 2023, af­ter they were both charged and con­vict­ed with the De­cem­ber 8, 1982, mur­ders of 15 men in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists, mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, union lead­ers, lawyers, busi­ness­men and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers. Bouterse was giv­en a 20-year jail term, Dijk­steel was sen­tenced to 15 years in jail.

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.

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.

Bouterse had been placed on an In­ter­na­tion­al Po­lice (IN­TER­POL) Red No­tice list, which 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.

Ear­li­er this week, the po­lice car­ried out raids at Bouterse’s home as part of op­er­a­tion ‘Christ­mas bread’ but came up emp­ty hand­ed. The Suri­name Po­lice Force has not is­sued any state­ment re­gard­ing the raids.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Dec 25, CMC –

CMC/ic/ir/2024