Bolivia Ex-President Anez behind bars, alleges persecution over coup claims
Bolivia’s former interim President Jeanine Anez landed behind bars on Saturday within the capital of the nation she led simply six months in the past after the brand new authorities arrested her on claims she participated in a 2019 coup to grab energy.
Anez and a raft of ministers and safety officers face expenses of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy over an alleged coup towards Bolivia’s 13-year socialist authorities, in keeping with an arrest warrant she posted on social media.
Anez led Bolivia for lower than a yr after long-time President Evo Morales left workplace following contested elections and violent protests.
The crackdown escalates hostilities between the present socialist administration of Morales’ political ally and successor President Luis Arce, and extra conservative opponents it accuses of ousting Morales.
Hours after a daybreak raid on Anez’s dwelling within the central metropolis of Trinidad, she was pictured behind bars in a ladies’s holding cell in La Paz awaiting a judicial listening to resulting from happen inside 24 hours.
She claimed to be the sufferer of “aberrant political persecution” and mentioned she ought to profit from immunity as a former president.
In letters to the Organization of American States and the European Union, Anez appealed for observer missions to judge her arrest and people of her former vitality and justice ministers.
“It is an absolute outrage, they are accusing us of being accomplices of an alleged coup,” Anez informed native tv as she arrived in a navy airplane at a La Paz airport beneath heavy police escort.
“There is not a grain of truth in the accusations. It is simple political intimidation. There was no coup. I took part in a constitutional succession.”
Anez took energy in late 2019 after Morales resigned amid widespread violent protests towards his authorities over allegations he fraudulently gained an election when operating for an unprecedented and unconstitutional fourth time period.
At least 33 folks had been killed in violence that adopted the election, 30 of them after Anez took workplace.
Morales’ Movement for Socialism social gathering, now headed by Arce, his former financial system minister, swept again to energy in a landslide election final October, prompting Morales to return from exile in Argentina.
Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo confirmed on Saturday that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had detained Anez for involvement in a “coup in our country.”
He insisted due course of can be adopted.
“There is no political persecution on our part here, and we do not fear anyone who thinks differently,” he informed a information convention.
Justice Minister Ivan Lima informed state TV the investigation towards Anez associated to the time she was an opposition senator, not the interim president. “For that reason constitutional privileges do not apply,” he mentioned.
Julie Chung, the U.S. State Department’s appearing assistant secretary for its Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, urged “our friends and neighbors in Bolivia” to uphold civil rights and assure detainees due course of.
“Americans and many across the Americas know from hard experience the need to safeguard and constantly renew democratic rule of, by, and for the people,” she tweeted.
‘WE ARE ALL JEANINE’
Luis Fernando Camacho, a lawyer and civic chief who turned a robust opposition determine and led protests towards Morales within the 2019 election deadlock, has additionally been named by prosecutors as wished in relation to the alleged coup.
Any try to detain Camacho, lately elected as governor of the rich, industrial metropolis of Santa Cruz to the east, might provoke civil unrest.
