Dutch ‘businessman’ Guus Kouwenhoven, the fugitive convicted war criminal and illegal arms dealer who was sentenced to 19 years in prison, died a free man on Sunday, September 6, his family announced.
Kouwenhoven was the partner-in-crime of the notorious Liberian warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor. The photo below shows Charles Taylor (left) and Guus Kouwenhoven (right).
In April 2017, a Dutch Appeals Court found Kouwenhoven guilty of war crimes in Liberia during this country’s civil war, and sentenced him to 19 years in prison. However, just before the Dutch court rendered its verdict, Kouwenhoven fled to Cape Town. He was traced here and briefly arrested (see the video of his arrest on YouTube), but the best and most expensive South African lawyers – paid for with his illegally acquired wealth – successfully prevented his extradition to the Netherlands.
No justice for the civil war victims…. Does crime pay after all?
Read all about the Kouwenhoven trials (2005–2017) and the saga of his extradition (from December 2017 onward) on my website. On September 22, 2021 the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa dismissed Kouwenhoven’s appeal and reportedly the South African Government was now free to extradite Mr. Kouwenhoven to the Netherlands. Little was heard thereafter regarding the progress of the Dutch extradition request. The Dutch government officially maintained the position that it did not wish to intervene in the legal proceedings of another independent country. Recent reports concerning the Dutch desire (though without confirmed concrete plans – unfortunately, the source is only available in Dutch) to apprehend the fugitive drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers—alias ‘Bolle Jos’, who was spotted in Sierra Leone—appear to contradict this stance.
