The son of Suriname's president was sentenced on Tuesday to 16-1/4 years in prison, after pleading guilty last August to US charges that he tried to offer a home base to the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah. Dino Bouterse, 42, who worked in a Suriname counterterrorist unit, was sentenced by US District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan. Bouterse had also admitted to drug trafficking and firearms charges.
US prosecutors accused Bouterse of inviting people he thought were from Hezbollah to establish a base in his home country, located north of Brazil, in exchange for $2 million that was ultimately not paid. Bouterse was arrested by Panamanian authorities after a sting in which he allegedly talked about his activities with confidential informants from the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
Hezbollah has since 1997 been designated by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organisation. Dressed in a blue-gray shirt and pants, Bouterse said prior to sentencing that "what I did does not really represent my country," and that his imprisonment would hurt his 11 children, aged 2 to 19.
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