Suri­namese po­lice have re­mained mum on me­dia re­ports that they car­ried out a search of the home of for­mer pres­i­dent De­si Bouterse, who ear­li­er this year had been sen­tenced to 20 years in jail on mur­der charges.

Me­dia re­ports said that the po­lice raid­ed the homes of Bouterse and Iwan Dijk­steel, who is al­so on the run af­ter they were both charged with the De­cem­ber 8, 1982, mur­ders of 15 men—in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists, mil­i­tary of­fi­cers, union lead­ers, lawyers, busi­ness­men and uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers. Dijk­steel, who had been Bouterse’s body­guard was jailed for 15 years.

The pros­e­cu­tion had al­leged that the men were ar­rest­ed on the nights of De­cem­ber 7 and 8, 1982, 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.

The me­dia re­ports said that the raids were be­ing car­ried out as part of op­er­a­tion ‘Christ­mas bread’ and that it is not clear whether the raids had been based on spe­cif­ic ‘in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion” giv­en that nei­ther of the men were at their homes.

The Suri­name Po­lice Force has not is­sued any state­ment re­gard­ing the raids.

Bouterse has 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.

The lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the rel­a­tives of the 15 peo­ple killed on De­cem­ber 8, 1982, has since called on the gov­ern­ment to of­fer a re­ward lead­ing to the ar­rest of Bouterse.

In his open let­ter to Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad “Chan” San­tokhi, the at­tor­ney, Hugo Essed, said he is re­quest­ing that every­thing be done to en­sure that all those con­vict­ed of the crime be cap­tured and jailed in ac­cor­dance with the court rul­ing.

Bouterse, 79, a for­mer mil­i­tary of­fi­cer, served as pres­i­dent from 2010- 2020. But from 1980 to 1987, he was Suri­name’s de fac­to leader af­ter con­duct­ing a mil­i­tary coup and es­tab­lish­ing a pe­ri­od of mil­i­tary rule. —PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name (CMC)