Attorney Irvin Kanhai.
PARAMARIBO--Irvin Kanhai, the attorney who is representing President Desi Bouterse in the December Murders trial, went on a full-frontal attack on Monday, on the judiciary, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Netherlands and even the fifteen men who were killed on December 8, 1982.
Kanhai, the first lawyer to respond to prison sentences the Prosecutor’s Office has demanded in the trial against the 25 defendants, said that the Prosecutor’s Office should recuse itself for not being able to prove its case, and if not, the court should acquit his client.
He said the Netherlands should pay the relatives of the 15 December Murders victims, compensation for creating the tense political climate that led to their deaths. He explained that the Netherlands was only looking out for its own economic interests when it prompted the men to conspire to remove Bouterse from Government in 1982.
The 15 men – Bouterse’s political opponents – were killed in the historic Fort Zeelandia in Paramaribo on December 8, 1982. Bouterse at that time was the military leader of Suriname. Kanhai said that there are witness statements from which it can be derived that the men were involved in a coup against Bouterse. “They were not armed, but they were figureheads,” he said, alluding to an “extensive document” that details how the Netherlands was planning an armed invasion of Suriname, together with the USA. The internal war from 1986 between the National Army and the Jungle Commando, was also orchestrated by the Netherlands, he said. The lawyer said that the former coloniser obviously did not worry about putting people’s lives in danger.
“We owe the army leadership thanks for the way they saved us from a disaster in December 1982, and for the years that followed. But instead we tarnished and abused their reputations for 35 years; we forced them and their descendants into pariahs, because we fell for the destructive propaganda by organisations here and abroad, that shrouded their guilt for the devastation that would rain on our country then, by blaming the soldiers who prevented it,” he charged.
The criminal trial against Bouterse and his co-defendants started in 2007, 25 years after the murders. It did not prevent the charismatic former military leader, who had meanwhile mushroomed into a popular politician, from becoming President in 2010 and being re-elected in 2015.
But in July 2017, Military Prosecutor Roy Elgin demanded 20 years in jail for Bouterse, as well as for three other former colonels and 10 years for Ruben Rozendaal (71), a former army sergeant who had rounded up some of the murder victims. Rozendaal committed suicide after hearing the 10-year demand.
Kanhai charged that the Prosecutor’s Office had botched the investigation and never had found any evidence against Bouterse. He said that there had been numerous witnesses who declared that the President had not been in the Fort at the time of the murders. Those who claimed that he had been there, insisted that he had not shot anyone.
Kanhai gave the Prosecutor a “failing mark” for his work. He sneered that criminal law is not a game of accusations and suspicions, but of hard evidence, which, he said, Prosecutor Roy Elgin had not delivered.
The attorney also took aim at the Military Court, accusing the panel of judges of abusing their authority, when they sidestepped the amendment the National Assembly made to the Amnesty Law in 2012; the amendment would see to a pardon of all defendants in the December Murders. The Criminal Court had decided that the amendment had no bearing and Kanhai criticised them for that, but Court President Cynthia Valstein-Montnor was not having it. She demanded that the lawyer take back his accusations, which he did eventually.
