Arnold R.A. Montroos Court sentenced him Tuesday to 56 months, 20 of which were suspended, with three years’ probation

Although the appeal launched against his conviction on drug smuggling charges did not lead to his desired acquittal, Arnold R.A. Montroos (27) may still be satisfied with the outcome of the procedure. The Joint Court sentenced him Tuesday to 56 months, 20 of which were suspended, with three years’ probation. The Court of First Instance had sentenced Montroos on June 24 to 56 months for the role he had played in the import of nine kilos of cocaine into St. Maarten via Princess Juliana International Airport in June 2007. Montroos had appealed because he considered his sentence to be too severe.
Montroos had tried to convince the three judges of the Appeals Court, during the October 29 hearing, that he had only played the role of liaison between key players in the drug-smuggling operation, without having knowledge of the ins and outs of the trade. Confronted with reports of wire-tapped telephone conversations he had held with several other suspects in this case, Montroos told the Court he could not recall what these “vague and highly unspecific calls,” as presiding Judge Liesbeth de Kerpel-van de Poel described them, had really been about.
His lawyer Anthony Eustatius, who had pleaded for his client’s acquittal, said the case against his client was based on police “fantasy and speculation.”
However, Acting Procurator-General Ton van der Schans had considered his case proven and requested that the Court impose a prison sentence of 56 months. The Appeals Court stated in its written ruling that it had been “unpleasantly surprised” by Montroos’ attitude during the hearing. Although he had stated that he would “come clean,” he had in “a hardly convincing way yet again denied any involvement in this drug transaction,” the judges wrote, adding that Montroos apparently also didn’t repent what he had done. Based on these deliberations, the Appeals Court considered a prison sentence of 60 months to be appropriate, but based on Montroos’ “relatively young age” and the fact that he had no prior convictions and had spent almost four weeks in detention in the cells at the police station, he was granted a four-month reduction of his sentence.