The Public Prosecution Service of Suriname has rejected a petition from Desi Bouterse's lawyers not to execute his sentence. This is stated in a letter from the Public Prosecution Service, which was published on Tuesday by the Surinamese newspaper, among others The True Time. The former president was finally sentenced last month to twenty years in prison in the December murder trial.
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Bouterse's new legal team submitted the request on Monday, the last day this was still possible. The lawyers appealed to an amnesty law revised in 2012. The change was intended to ensure that all suspects of the December murders of 1982, including President Bouterse, who had taken office two years earlier, would go free. In 2016, the Surinamese Court Martial ruled that the law did not apply, after which the Constitutional Court annulled the law in 2021.
The fact that Bouterse's lawyers argued that the amnesty law would apply had to do with an earlier letter from Roy Elgin. He was previously a military prosecutor in the case and stated in 2016 that legal errors had been made on several points. For example, according to him, the Court Martial should not have revoked the amnesty law.
Bouterse and four co-suspects heard the final verdict in the appeal in a lengthy criminal case in December. He stood trial for his role in the torture and murder of 15 opponents and critics of his military regime in 1982, when he was in charge of the army. It is not yet clear when he will be detained.
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