By ARNY BELFOR
The Associated Press
Sunday, July 16, 2006; 2:19 AM

MOENGO, Suriname -- Hundreds of relatives of at least 39 people killed 20 years ago by a military dictatorship returned to their native Suriname to receive an official apology and compensation from the government.

In a dusty bauxite mining town near the now-deserted village of Moiwana, where a military unit shot to death men, women and children and torched their thatched-hut homes during a civil war with jungle-based rebels, President Ronald Venetiaan offered an apology Saturday to the victims' tribal leader.

"The government declares respectfully and publicly that it offers its apologies ... to the surviving relatives of the barbaric attack carried out by the state against the peaceful community of Moiwana," he said to Matodja Gazon, who leads the N'djuka group of Maroons _ the descendants of runaway African slaves that fled 17th century colonial plantations.

The act of public contrition came on the last day permitted by a 2005 international court ruling that also required the South American nation's government to compensate survivors and victims' descendants and prosecute those responsible for the killings.

In the last two days, more than 90 percent of the 130 survivors and relatives of victims were each paid $13,000, said Loes Monsels, the government official responsible for distributing the money. The rest were expected to be paid in coming days, she told The Associated Press.

But the effort to find remains and to bring those responsible to justice goes on for survivors such as Monique James, who as an 11-year-old traveled for days through the dense Amazon jungle to escape the soldiers who killed her family in Moiwana.

"I just ran and ran and somehow I escaped alive," said the 31-year-old mother of five, her traditional skirt embroidered with the name of her home village. "I don't know how I wasn't shot or killed; everyone around me was being shot."

James, who has lived in neighboring French Guiana since escaping Suriname after the Nov. 29, 1986, massacre, said she felt a bit fearful at the heavily guarded ceremony.

"I was haunted for years by nightmares of soldiers coming to get me. I still have those dreams occasionally," she said, near a special police unit with machine guns slung over their shoulders.

Andre Ajintoema, 39, whose sister and young niece were killed in the massacre, said the "very overdue" apology will fuel more controversy about why so little has been done to prosecute the killings.

"The investigation must come as soon as possible. I don't feel safe after all this time," he said, standing among a group of Maroons wearing the group's signature checkered-cloth skirts.

But the investigation faces steep challenges because witnesses are fearful. Former Surinamese dictator Desi Bouterse, now an opposition lawmaker, remains a powerful figure in the former Dutch colony on the northeast shoulder of South America.

Venetiaan's government, which is already trying to prosecute Bouterse for his alleged involvement in the killings of 15 political opponents, has said it will comply with the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling in the Moiwana case, but needs help from survivors.

At the time of the massacre, Bouterse, who seized power in a 1980 coup, was fighting an armed opposition force called the Jungle Commandos. Many of the rebels were Maroons, as was the group's leader, Ronnie Brunswijk.

Bouterse was forced by international pressure in 1987 to give up power and allow the return of a democratically elected government.