They demand to prosecute in Bolivia cover-ups for fugitive coup plotters

“We are going to request with a fiscal request that the Government deliver these documents to the Prosecutor’s Office to initiate the process of these 10 soldiers who have collaborated with ‘terrorists’,” said the lawyer in statements to the Bolivia TV channel.

The lawyer in charge of the criminal process against Jeanine Áñez, Murillo and other de facto government officials implicated in the cause known as coup d’état I, Valdés insisted that the members of the military jurisdiction should be investigated for the alleged illicit concealment and complicity with former ministers accused of evading justice and fleeing abroad.

He considered that these officers should be summoned to testify and “they have to be apprehended, because we are not talking about a minor crime, we are talking about the crime of terrorism, the same one that has resulted in 38 deaths.”

The lawyer for former deputy Lidia Patty asked prosecutors to declare the case in reserve in order not to make public the names of the military, who may escape.

A report published in the last hours specifies that López and Murillo’s flight was planned and that on November 5, 2020 an operation was carried out with the aim of guaranteeing the departure of the two de facto former ministers from the country to prevent their judicial prosecution.

The Erbol network reported that the military escorted the fugitives to the border with Brazil.

Radio Cepra, for its part, reported that the former deputy of the Movement to Socialism Lidia Patty accused the former de facto ruler of the crimes of sedition, terrorism and conspiracy for the overthrow, on November 10, 2019, of the then president Evo Morales, in the middle of the “color revolution” carried out by the opposition after the October 20 elections.

In complicity with the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, the sectors in favor of neoliberal therapies used as a pretext an alleged fraud to break the constitutional order, although this version was later denied by independent international researchers.

For this case, known as Coup d’etat I, his former ministers Álvaro Coímbra and Rodrigo Guzmán have been arrested together with Añez since March 2021.

The Vice Minister of Justice Jaime Siles explained that the process was divided after the presentation of another accusation for breach of duties and resolutions contrary to the Constitution and other laws when Añez “irregularly” assumed the presidency of the Senate and later the Head of State.

mem / jpm