By On 20 December 2023, the Hof van Justitie, Suriname’s highest court of appeal, issued a judgement confirming the conviction and twenty-year prison sentence of Desiré Delano Bouterse in what has been the longest criminal trial in the country’s history. In this article, which forms the first of two parts, Jeff Handmaker explains the background to the trial, and why the International Commission of Jurists started to actively monitor this trial since 2012.
The 1982 December Murders
What makes this trial unique and special is not only the severity and nature of the crimes being charged, but the fact that the principal accused is a former head of state. The charges against Bouterse and other accused comprised atrocity crimes, including torture and extra-judicial executions of fifteen men, allegedly committed in 1982 under the leadership of then Sergeant Desi Bouterse during a military coup that allegedly also included the complicity of the Dutch government.
According to Amnesty International, which has been following the case already since 1982, the killings were ‘never properly investigated’. This understanding aligned with other human rights organisations, including the Netherlands Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (NJCM) which released a report on 14 February 1983, and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) which conducted a mission and issued a report on 4 March 1983.
While the opportunities for seeking justice at the time were virtually non-existent, the events of December 1982 have certainly not been forgotten. In particular, the victims’ families of those men who lost their lives have refused to remain silent and remained committed in securing redress. Their advocacy was accompanied by a growing academic scholarship on atrocity crimes, including by Suriname jurist Gaetano Best, who later completed an (unrelated) doctoral thesis in 2016 at the University of Amsterdam on ‘Fair and Accurate Fact-Finding in Dutch Atrocity Crimes Cases‘ and subsequently returned to practice law in Suriname, which later also included frequent commentary on the Bouterse trial.
The trial begins
On November 2007, in the midst of advocacy by the victims of those killed in December 1982, a trial was initiated against Bouterse and twenty-four other individuals, including sitting government officials. The court was located on a naval base in Boxel just outside the capital city of Paramaribo, and comprised two chambers: a civilian chamber (criminal court) and a military chamber (court-martial) each with a three-judge panel. Both chambers had the same, highly experienced judge-president, Justice Cynthia Valstein-Montnor.
Three years later, Bouterse was elected as president of Suriname. Remarkably, the trial continued, largely unhindered by these developments. Eventually, the Suriname parliament passed an Amnesty Law in 2012 that aimed to extend immunity for prosecution to Bouterse and other co-accused. Emboldened by this, Bouterse’s lawyers argued that the prosecutor had no authority to purse the charges against him.
After five years of delays, and little tangible progress in the trial on its merits, doubts began to emerge as to whether the Court had the capacity to consider this matter in a free, impartial and objective manner.
ICJ trial observation
Confronted with persistent delays as well as some reports of intimidation against journalists, court officials and the public prosecutor, the ICJ, as one of the largest and most established human rights organizations in the world based in Geneva, decided to launch a trial observation mission. This was in anticipation of a judgement that the Court was due to issue in May 2012.
The ICJ’s first, in-person trial observation mission took place from 8 – 12 May 2012. As a British lawyer, with some years of experience teaching post-graduate students in the country and with a knowledge of Dutch (the official language of Suriname), I was asked to lead the mission. This comprised a combination of tasks, set-out in a trial observation manual that the ICJ had produced earlier, which drew on the experiences of earlier ICJ trial observation missions. This included meeting with officials, making clear to all actors that they were under scrutiny, collecting findings about the context in which the trial was being held in order to ensure compliance with international due process requirements, issuing press releases, speaking to the media and of course issuing a report.
Court’s first Judgement in 2012
The occasion of an in-person mission in May 2012 was to attend the trial itself and to speak with various key stakeholders to get a sense on whether international standards of due process were being respected. Based on its findings and a comprehensive analysis of both Suriname law and international law, the conclusions that we drew in the report were fourfold. First, while the Government of Suriname had co-operated fully with the trial observation mission and did not hinder the work of the mission, the court had not yet clearly decided on the implications of the Amnesty Law. Second, there appeared to be space for a fair trial in Suriname, although continued procedural delays raised questions about this. Third, the role of a free, professional and independent media was seen to be crucial. And finally, public interest in the trial from diplomatic missions, as well as international organizations, promoted greater visibility of the outcome and integrity of the process.
In other words, while there was no overt effort to subvert the rule of law by force, even by Bouterse, as both the sitting President of the country and the principal accused, the main legal issue at stake had not been conclusively established. This was namely: whether (1) the passing of an Amnesty Law was valid, which implied that the trial ought to be stopped altogether or alternatively, (2) the Amnesty Law was not consistent with the constitution and therefore the trial should proceed.
As discussed in Part II, the next stage in this legal drama proved to be both eventful and for us as trial observers, very frustrating.
Read the Second part of this blog: https://wp.me/p9fvbD-76E
Image by Antonisse, Marcel / Anefo (CC Zero): https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=december+moorden+suriname&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image
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About the author:
Dr. Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor of Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam and has published widely on topics concerning Israel’s decades-long impasse with the Palestinians. He conducts research on legal mobilization.
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