Caribbean Corner

As leaders of his National Democratic Party (NDP) had bragged, Desi Delano Bouterse needed no formal send-off from the state as he was cremated on Saturday. Thousands of Surinamese either joined the funeral procession or lined the route from his city home to NDP headquarters, where he was eulogized and remembered as a fierce nationalist who had changed the country's politics, albeit sometimes through extra-parliamentary means. Bouterse, who died hours before Christmas Day at 79, was denied a state funeral by the administration of President Chan Santokhi, as the cabinet had cited his links to two previous military coups and the notorious December 1982 mass murders of 15 government opponents for which he was eventually convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison along with four co-defendants. [caption id="attachment_69584" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Jen-ai Bouterse, Peggy Bouterse and widow Ingrid Bouterse attend a memorial service for ...

Authorities in Suriname have returned the body of former military strongman and ex-president Desi Bouterse to close relatives and to his National Democratic Party (NDP) after learning over the weekend that he had died of liver failure linked to excessive drinking while in hiding from a 20-year prison sentence for mass murder. The autopsy performed on Bouterse, 79, showed that “that the probable date of death was on Monday or Tuesday. The cause of death was determined to be complication of liver failure in severe liver fibrosis, caused by chronic alcohol use," the report stated. The former army sergeant major who along with about 15 other comrades had toppled the elected government in a February 1980 coup, had vanished into hiding in January after an appeals court had upheld a 20-year prison sentence for the December 1982 murders of 15 government opponents that the military-led regime had accused of plotting with The Netherlands and other western nations to reverse the coup...