The Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office charged two ministers of the right-wing transitional former president Jeanine Áñez for “illegal arms trafficking”, accused of illegally importing riot gear from Ecuador in 2019, an official reported this Friday.
“The Public Ministry issued a formal accusation” against the former Ministers of the Government (Interior), Arturo Murillo, and of Defense, Luis Fernando López, said the Secretary General of the Prosecutor’s Office, Edwin Quispe, at a press conference.
The decision was announced a week after Áñez was sentenced to 10 years in prison, accused of leading a 2019 coup against her predecessor, the leftist Evo Morales. This ruling raised international criticism and doubts about the independence of justice in Bolivia.
Murillo is detained in the United States for the crime of corruption and is awaiting his sentence, while López was in Brazil.
Quispe specified that both were indicted “within the case called Ecuador’s non-lethal weapons.”
These are the alleged crimes of “illegal arms trafficking, possession or carrying and use of non-conventional weapons and breach of duties to the degree of co-authorship,” according to the indictment.
Arms trafficking is punishable by the Bolivian civil code with 10 to 15 years in prison.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintains that, after Áñez came to power in November 2019, both ministers participated in the acquisition of anti-riot elements in Ecuador to quell the protests of Morales supporters.
These protests culminated in 35 deaths, according to an investigation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
“Several elements account for the direct and immediate participation in a meeting of Murillo and López with Mrs. Jeanine Áñez”, for the import together with the then Minister of Communication, Roxana Lizárraga, Quispe said.
“Lizárraga would have made contact with police personnel from the Republic of Ecuador in which he would have agreed that that country can provide anti-riot equipment, gases and other explosives,” according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
The former minister, who is estimated to be in Peru, has not been charged.
The current government of leftist Luis Arce and the ruling Movement Towards Socialism, led by Morales, affirm that the governments of Lenín Moreno in Ecuador and Mauricio Macri in Argentina, the European Union, the OAS and the Catholic Church supported the “coup d’etat”. against the indigenous president.
After the resignation of Morales, after 14 years in power, he was succeeded two days later by Áñez, who was second vice president of the Senate.
