A judge ordered this Wednesday to extend from four to eight months the preventive detention of the governor of the Santa Cruz region and main opponent of the Bolivian government, Luis Fernando Camacho, accused of promoting a “coup” in 2019.
Source: AFP
After hours of hearing, the La Paz district judge, Helmer Laura, ordered “the present day [miércoles] the extension of preventive detention of Mr. Luis Fernando Camacho, for a requested period of four more months.”
Camacho, a 44-year-old businessman, was arrested on December 28 in the city of Santa Cruz, bastion of the right, and two days later a judge ordered his preventive imprisonment in the maximum security prison of Chonchocoro.
A main opponent of leftist President Luis Arce and leader of Santa Cruz, the country’s most populous region and economic locomotive, he is accused of promoting an alleged coup against former leftist President Evo Morales in 2019.
A few days after the first four months are up, Judge Laura ordered this Wednesday to extend the arrest for another four more months, in response to requests from the Ministry of the Interior, the Prosecutor’s Office and the government Attorney General’s Office.
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Before learning of the judge’s ruling, Camacho said that he expected justice, during a videoconference from the Chonchocoro prison.
commit a crime “by having a person illegally detained”, He added when denouncing that the extension of his detention is “only for political purposes.”
At the end of 2019, violent protests promoted by the right-wing opposition that denounced Morales for allegedly committing fraud in the October elections of that year broke out.
The indigenous president, in power since 2006, aspired to govern until 2025. He left power and went first to Mexico and then to Argentina, before returning to his country, after the electoral victory of his dolphin, the current president Luis Arce in 2020.
An audit report from the Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed irregularities in that year’s presidential elections.
Morales was succeeded by the then right-wing senator Jeanine Áñez, sentenced to 10 years in prison since June 2022 for the same case.
