December murders

The December murders led to international protest by numerous Western countries and human rights organizations.

In March 2007 he accepted political responsibility for the murders, but he then also explicitly stated that he personally had not 'pulled the trigger' to kill the fifteen men.

[3] After their abduction, the fifteen victims were transported to Fort Zeelandia, the then headquarters of Bouterse and his soldiers in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname.

Derby reported his experiences on December 8, 2000, saying he was not murdered because, Bouterse told him, he was needed to cool the temper of the unions, which were frequently on strike at that time.

[8] On 7 December 1982, Slagveer was arrested, and, with visible signs of torture, forced to read a confession on television that the group had tried to overthrow the government.

[9] After the election of Bouterse as president in August 2010, Parliament moved in 2012 to amend a 1992 amnesty law to include the period of the December murders.

[10][11] The amendment was signed into law in April 2012 by the vice president, and resulted in halting the murder trial against (among others) then-president Desi Bouterse.

[14] Using his authority as defined in article 148 of the Constitution of Suriname, President Bouterse then declared that the trial was a threat to national security, and ordered the prosecutor to halt prosecution on 29 June 2016.

Eventually the court-martial ordered the prosecutor on 30 January 2017 to read the charges and ignore the instructions by the President because the matter was no longer in hands of the executive but of the judicial branch.

[15] In June 2017, military prosecutor Roy Elgrin was able to read his conclusions, and demanded a 20-year prison sentence for the main suspect Desi Bouterse.