Suriname: President Bouterse wants Cocaine conviction retrial in Netherlands and goes on "redemption" campaign at home

Desi and Dino : "shame and scandal in the family"

President of Suriname, Desi Bouterse, wants his sentence to 11 years in prison due to cocaine trade be scrapped, and has asked the Supreme Court for a retrial, the NRC reports.

Bouterse’s lawyer Inez Weski presented the Court with a request for a review on Tuesday against the 2000 conviction by the court in The Hague.

According to the lawyer, the key witness in the court case, Belgian Patrick van L. said that he gave a falsely incriminating statement to the court because he was under pressure from the Public Prosecution Service (OM). The witness said that Bouterse was involved in the transport of 474 kilos of cocaine, which was intercepted in the Stellendam port in 1997.

Weski states that the witness made this statement because the OM promised him several favors that were never made public. Van L. has retracted his earlier statements with the notary public.

In the request for a retrial, Bouterse’s lawyer also asks for “a thorough investigation into the established violations of the probe and the judicial process, not only so that the client (Bouterse) be done right by, but at the same time it be prevented that an investigative team no longer be able to operate beyond every rule of law in this blinding manner.”

Bouterse stood trial for a number of drug transporting claims, but was only convicted for the Stellendam case, and got 11 years. Then-lawyer in that case, Bram Moszkowicz asked for a retrial in 2002. According to him, the statement given by key witness Van L. was untrustworthy.

But problems with drugs are not only isolated to the President, his son Dino Bouterse, who had been appointed by his father as director of Suriname's anti-terrorism unit, was arrested last year in Panama by local authorities and turned over to U.S. agents and is on trial in New York on terrorism and drug charges

His arrest came just when his father, President Desi Bouterse, a former coup leader and himself convicted of drug offenses, hosted the annual UNASUR summit for political leaders of South American countries.

In the meantime President Desi Bouterse in a "look how clean and good I am campaign" has promised the Suriname legislature that his government will go to war against all proven cases of corruption. He instructed vice president Robert Ameerali to order the Government Accounting Agency (CLAD) to start immediate investigation in all government departments and semi-government enterprises to unearth malpractices and corruption.

"This is hypocrisy in overdrive", said a member of the Suriname opposition in the  legislature.

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