Suriname’s ex-president Desi Bouterse, 78, will not turn himself in on Friday to start serving a 20-year prison sentence for the murder of political opponents more than four decades ago, his wife said.
“No,” Ingrid Bouterse told journalists when asked if her husband would report for prison.
“You all know that this is a political process and we are giving a political answer.”
In December, the South American country’s highest court upheld Bouterse’s 2019 conviction for the execution of 15 people — lawyers, journalists, businessmen and military personnel — in December 1982, two years after he took power following a coup.
Bouterse, a former strongman who led two coups and also served as an elected president of the former Dutch colony until 2020, had remained free awaiting the outcome of his case.
Bouterse and four others found guilty alongside him had been ordered to report to authorities on Friday.
Three of his four co-convicts, sentenced to 15 years each, showed up with their defense lawyer.
Supporters of Bouterse, who remains very popular, notably with the country’s poor and working class, gathered at his house, singing and dancing to show their support.
“Bouterse is good where he is now,” Ramon Abrahams, the deputy chairman of the former president’s National Democratic Party (NDP), said earlier.
Asked where he was, he replied cryptically: “What I can say he is between the Atlantic Ocean, the Tumuk Humak Mountains, the Courantyne river and the Maroni river,” referring to Suriname’s border points.
Addressing some 200 party supporters, Abrahams said: “I urge you not only to keep a cool head but to pay close attention to what will happen in the coming days. Bouterse has indicated that he will not report to prison. The party fully supports him.”
