Suriname becoming a key port in shipment of S. American drugs

By Tod Robberson / The Dallas Morning News

PARAMARIBO, Suriname This minuscule former Dutch colony is emerging as an
important center of the international drug trade, due largely to the
involvement of top members of President Jules Wijdenbosch's government,
international antinarcotics officials say.

Suriname, a desperately poor and isolated country on South America's
northern Atlantic Coast, is witnessing an explosion in criminal activity,
much of which is being directed, financed and protected by the national
military and senior Cabinet members, according to Suriname police officials
and investigators in the United States and Europe.

In August, the Netherlands issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Wijdenbosch's
closest political ally, military strongman Desi Bouterse, alleging his
involvement in international drugtrafficking, moneylaundering and other
criminal enterprises.

Mr. Bouterse, who holds a senior Cabinet position and is widely described
as the most powerful man in Suriname, has denied any involvement in
drugtrafficking. Mr. Wijdenbosch has not been named a suspect.

A senior Defense Ministry official and close friend of Mr. Bouterse,
Etienne Boerenveen, served a fiveyear prison sentence in the United States
for conspiracy to import narcotics. Immediately after emerging from prison
in the early 1990s, Mr. Boerenveen assumed the title of chief defense
officer of Suriname, a post he continues to hold today.

Mr. Boerenveen's job gives him direct control of the seaports, airport and
customsinspection facilities, which are described in a March U.S. State
Department report as being at the center of Suriname's drugtrafficking
industry.

Mr. Boerenveen and other top officials figure prominently in the 40 volumes
of evidence amassed by Dutch prosecutorgeneral Arthur Docters van Leeuwen
in a lengthy investigation of drugtrafficking and moneylaundering
activities in Suriname.

Mr. Bouterse and Mr. Boerenveen declined repeated requests for interviews.
Mr. Bouterse's Dutch and Surinamese attorneys did not return phone calls.

Suriname government spokesman Andy Rusland dismissed the allegations made
by the Dutch prosecutor as being based on hearsay and anonymous,
confidential informants who have failed to provide any direct proof.

He said the Netherlands has been attempting to defame Mr. Bouterse ever
since he led a 1980 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected
government and installed an antiDutch junta. Suriname, whose population
hovers around 440,000, won independence from the Netherlands in 1975.

"Recolonization is one of the issues in this," Mr. Rusland said of the
Dutch investigation.

Legislator Frank Playfair, a supporter of Mr. Bouterse, told a Dutch
newspaper last August: "History has shown that the Netherlands always has a
political score to settle with political leaders who want to make something
of Suriname."

Foreign officials say that Suriname's geographic isolation, dense jungle
cover and close commercial ties to the Netherlands make it a popular venue
for South American traffickers to transship and export their illicit goods.

Unlike its South American and Caribbean neighbors, Suriname has no
antinarcotics cooperation agreement with the United States, which would
permit the Coast Guard to board and search outbound cargo ships. That means
that drugs leaving Suriname have a better chance of reaching their intended
destinations, antidrug officials say.

"Suriname is an increasingly important transshipment point for narcotics
shipped from Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia to the Netherlands and the
U.S.," said a State Department antinarcotics report issued in March.

"International narcotics traffickers from Colombia and Bolivia ship cocaine
primarily by air through Venezuela to clandestine airstrips outside the
capital city of Paramaribo. ... Traffickers reportedly transport cocaine
shipments weighing up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) from Brazil by river."

Both the U.S. and Dutch governments also have been pressing the Suriname
government to investigate Mr. Bouterse's alleged role in the 1982
executions of 15 prominent opposition activists, including journalists,
lawyers and politicians who had criticized his military rule.

Mr. Bouterse, 52, continues to instill a sense of fear and respect here,
Surinamers say.

When asked to comment on the allegations against Mr. Bouterse, the vice
chairman of the national legislature, Oeday Jarbandham, requested that an
American reporter wait in the hall outside his office. Then he exited
through a back door, jumped in his car and drove away.

Mr. Jarbandham and Mr. Wijdenbosch are ranking members of the National
Democratic Party, which Mr. Bouterse founded and continues to lead.

Part of the reason for the fear of Mr. Bouterse, Surinamers say, is that
his loyalists have a reputation for harsh retaliation against any who
challenge his authority. After the Dutch arrest warrant was announced, Mr.
Bouterse was quoted in Suriname newspapers as warning that anyone who
provided information to investigators would face retribution.

George D.C. Findlay, publisher of the daily newspaper De West, said it was
not clear exactly how Mr. Bouterse phrased his threat, "but if you know the
man well, and he says he is going to find out who was talking to the Dutch
investigators, then you know someone is going to be in big trouble."

Mr. Docters van Leeuwen, the Dutch prosecutor, said the warrant against Mr.
Bouterse was the result of several years of investigations and
evidencegathering. He told reporters in the Hague last April that the case
against Mr. Bouterse was based on "extremely strong testimony."

It was shortly after that statement that Mr. Wijdenbosch named Mr. Bouterse
to the Cabinet post of adviser to the state, the third most powerful
position in the government. Foreign government officials said the move was
designed to give Mr. Bouterse a form of diplomatic immunity.

Mr. Bouterse's Dutch lawyer, Abraham Moszkowicz, was quoted in the Dutch
press as saying that Mr. Bouterse would submit to questioning in Suriname
or come to the Netherlands to talk to investigators, but only if he
received immunity.