Bouterse Pleads Guilty To Terrorism, Drug Charges

NEW YORK, New York, CMC – Dino Bouterse, the 41-year old son of Suriname President Desi Bouterse, Friday, pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to aid the Lebanese paramilitary group, Hezbollah, and conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.

Bouterse, who once held a senior counter-terrorism post in the Dutch-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country, admitted in a New York federal court that he had tried to provide material support to Hezbollah, which the United States has deemed a terrorist group.

“In 2013, I knowingly provided a false Surinamese passport to a person I believed to be associated with Hezbollah, an organization I knew to be designated a terrorist organization by the United States,” Bouterse told the court.

He also pleaded guilty to conspiring to import narcotics and carrying a firearm during a drug-trafficking crime.

Bouterse, who faces a sentence of between 15 years and life in prison, was accused of inviting people he believed to be from Hezbollah to establish a base in Suriname to attack Americans, in exchange for an initial two million US dollar payment.

His plea came a year after he was arrested in Panama and extradited to the United States on charges that he conspired to import cocaine into the United States. The charge relating to Hezbollah was added in November.

The court was told that Bouterse met in 2013 with people who claimed to work for Mexican drug traffickers but were actually confidential informants with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The US indictment said that he discussed helping them transport cocaine and obtain weapons and in July 2013, met with a DEA source to discuss opening Suriname to the informant’s purported Hezbollah associates.

The indictment said he later met in Europe with the source and two other men claiming to belong to Hezbollah.