Pursuant to the request by the relatives of two victims, on 20 November 2000 the Amsterdam Court of Appeal allowed Dutch prosecutors to investigate the responsibility of former Suriname military leader Desi Bouterse for the torture and killing of 15 political opponents of the Suriname government in 1982.

The Court first found that the acts in question qualified as torture and crimes against humanity, and that a person having committed such acts in another country could be prosecuted in the Netherlands, since already in 1982 torture was a crime subject to universal jurisdiction under customary international law. The Court also found that prosecution was possible on the basis of the Convention against Torture: to do so, the Court authorized the retroactive application of Dutch legislation implementing the Convention against Torture, contending that, because the acts were contrary to peremptory norms of international law, it was possible to apply the Dutch enabling legislation of 1988 (which only entered into force on 20 January 1989) to acts that had occurred in 1982, since the Convention against Torture was only declaratory of pre-existing international customary law.

In September 2002, however, after the decision was appealed by the Prosecutor General for "cassation in the interest of the law,” the Dutch Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal’s decision: the Supreme Court interpreted the principle of legality enshrined in the Dutch Constitution and the Criminal Code as being incompatible with the decision of the Court of Appeal. As a result, the Supreme Court found that the Dutch Act implementing the Convention against Torture was not applicable to Bouterse's acts in 1982, since Article 16 of the Dutch Constitution prohibits retroactive application of the law. The Dutch courts therefore lack jurisdiction over Bouterse's case and the accused will have to stand trial in Suriname.

Text:

No translation available.