Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj, who has been de­tained in Suri­name since Oc­to­ber 6, will have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to hear what­ev­er ev­i­dence the po­lice have against him when the mat­ter comes up on Wednes­day.

This will be the first time that the 59-year-old poll­ster, who has threat­ened to go on hunger strike, will be heard by any part of the ju­di­cia­ry in the coun­try.

All the de­ci­sions re­gard­ing his de­ten­tion have been made so far by the po­lice and un­der Ar­ti­cle 61, if the po­lice have al­ready tak­en pe­ri­ods of eight and 30 days to in­ves­ti­gate a per­son while in cus­tody and still have not charged him, they must present some ev­i­dence to sup­port their re­quest for con­tin­ued cus­tody.

Ram­samooj, who has worked for po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the Caribbean, in­clud­ing Ja­maica, Guyana, Grena­da, St Lu­cia and St. Kitts-Nevis, was told by Suri­name po­lice on Oc­to­ber 6 that they want­ed a state­ment or ev­i­dence to sup­port an in­quiry in­to op­er­a­tions at the Suri­namese Post Sav­ings Bank (SPSB).

Un­der Suri­name’s law, the po­lice can de­tain any­one at the sta­tion or at the cen­tral pen­i­ten­tiary for pe­ri­ods of 30 days, re­new­able by mak­ing a re­quest with­in their own ranks. They do not re­port to the ju­di­cial sys­tem re­gard­ing the han­dling of sus­pects and Ram­samooj has not yet made an ap­pear­ance be­fore a mag­is­trate.

There is no au­to­mat­ic right to be heard by a court, un­til af­ter the first pe­ri­ods of sev­en and 30 days have elapsed. But the po­lice have re­newed the 30-day pe­ri­od twice and un­der the law, the po­lice may keep re­new­ing for the in­car­cer­a­tion for up to six months.

Suri­name is a sig­na­to­ry to the In­ter Amer­i­can Con­ven­tion on Hu­man Rights that states in part that no one shall be sub­ject to ar­bi­trary ar­rest or im­pris­on­ment. It al­so states that any­one who is de­tained shall be in­formed of the rea­sons for his de­ten­tion and shall be prompt­ly no­ti­fied of the charge or charges against him.

Last week, Ram­samooj’s lawyer, Mau­reen Nibte, said she was se­ri­ous­ly con­cerned about the phys­i­cal and men­tal con­di­tion of her client, who is di­a­bet­ic. Ram­samooj is said to be se­ri­ous­ly con­cerned about the dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion has tak­en.

There had been re­ports last week of charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing, em­bez­zle­ment, par­tic­i­pa­tion in a crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion and fal­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments be­ing laid against the poll­ster, how­ev­er, Nibte had said at that time that she had not seen an of­fi­cial in­dict­ment.

At the time of his ar­rest, Ram­samooj was serv­ing as a con­sul­tant to Suri­name’s Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty led by its for­mer pres­i­dent Dési Bouterse. In elec­tions held in Ju­ly, the NDP lost to the Op­po­si­tion VHP and Bouterse was re­placed as pres­i­dent by Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi, a for­mer po­lice in­spec­tor.