A son of Suriname’s president has been arrested in Panama and sent to New York to face charges of smuggling cocaine into the US, US authorities said on Friday.
An indictment against Dino Bouterse filed in a federal court in the Southern District of New York, alleges the 40-year-old imported more than 5kg of cocaine into the US between December 2011 and last month.
Bouterse was arrested at Panama’s Tocumen International Airport on Thursday, authorities said.
He was arraigned on Friday in a Manhattan federal court for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the US and for carrying a firearm or destructive device — an anti-tank rocket launcher and pistols — during a drug-related crime.
According to the indictment, a man named Edmund Quincy Muntslag traveled to Suriname on July 25 to arrange the transport of 10kg of cocaine to the US.
On July 27, the indictment alleges, Bouterse “caused a suitcase containing 10kg of cocaine to be transported from Suriname to the Caribbean on board a commercial flight.”
Muntslag was arrested in Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday and charged with drug trafficking, according to a statement from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Bouterse’s father, Surinamese President Desi Bouterse, is a former military dictator accused of human rights violations, including the killings of 15 political opponents in December 1982. He ruled the tiny South American country from 1980 to 1987, and reclaimed power in 2010.
Following Dino’s arrest, Desi Bouterse postponed his opening statement at the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) summit in Suriname’s capital, Paramaribo, by three hours.
“I have heard about the news, but, at this moment, I am concentrating on the UNASUR meeting,” he told reporters shortly before opening the conference, declining to comment further.
Suriname’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it was “monitoring developments closely.”
In a statement, US Drug Enforcement Administration Special-Agent-in-Charge Derek Maltz said Dino Bouterse had a “history of drug and weapons trafficking.”
A judge in Suriname sentenced the younger Bouterse to eight years in prison in 2005 for trafficking drugs, illegal weapons and stolen luxury cars. Nevertheless, his father gave him a senior post in the country’s counterterrorism unit.
Desi Bouterse was convicted in absentia in the Netherlands in 1999 for smuggling more than 450kg of cocaine to that country, but he never served any prison time as Suriname does not have an extradition treaty with the Netherlands.
Since being elected president in 2010, Desi Bouterse has obtained diplomatic immunity against the charges.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
RSS