July 29, 2024, 4:24 PM
July 29, 2024, 4:24 PM
The State Attorney General, César Siles, assured this Monday that it will be done “every effort necessary” to ensure that the claim in the Hotel Las Américas case is declared “unproven”“in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR)” or at least the ruling is in more favorable terms for the Bolivian State.”
On July 26, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) informed Bolivia that it had submitted the case to the IACHR, after it had not accepted a new request for an extension to comply with its recommendations (including financial compensation for the victims) for the alleged extrajudicial executions and torture during the assault on the Hotel Las América in Santa Cruz, which occurred in 2009.
“We have been reporting as the Attorney General’s Office, on behalf of the State, the efforts that were being made, not only in the matter of economic reparation, but also in the other recommendations, which are four in total. (However, in the end) we have been formally notified that The IACHR has rejected a possibility of further expansion because it considers that there will no longer be time to comply with the recommendations, a criterion with which we disagree as a Statebut it is the competent authority that has decided to take the case to the Court,” he said.
The Attorney General added that this process was initiated by six petitioners and that a defense strategy will now be defined within a process that is expected to last two or three years.
The official recalled that, initially, the petitioners requested Three million euros in financial compensation for the execution of Irish citizen Michel Dwyer and “in the case of people who have been allegedly harassed and tortured, one million dollars for each of them.”
In response to this request, “we have requested a technical note (from the IACHR) and fortunately, in the time we had (to comply with the recommendations), this technical criterion arrived and has been brought to the attention of the petitioners,” he said.
He explained that this technical criterion refers to reference amounts based on similar cases and, in this sense, the amount of financial compensation would only be “500,000 to 600,000 dollars at most” for the death of a person.
“In the case of torture and harassment, the amount should not exceed 100 thousand dollars per person. This has been made known to the petitioners through the IACHR and I understand that this has been one of the reasons why they deny any possibility of continuing to advance in compliance with the recommendations,” he said.
