Skip to main content

Jeanine Anez stopped from boarding plane in bid to flee Bolivian justice

BOLIVIA’S ex-president Jeanine Anez has been prevented from fleeing the country, activists in Beni department say.

A representative of social organisations in the region say that activists stopped Ms Anez boarding a plane at the Jorge Henrich Arauz airport in the city of Trinidad.

She faces charges relating to massacres at Senkata, Sacaba and Yapacani conducted by the military on orders of her government.

An investigation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that 35 people were killed in the incidents, in which the army crushed protests by supporters of elected president Evo Morales after it had forced him to abdicate and flee last winter. Ms Anez was installed as an unelected president by the military. She withdrew from last month’s presidential election after polls showed her struggling to reach 5 per cent of the vote.

An anonymous spokesman for the social movements said: “We cornered her when she was escaping to Brazil. We arrested her and she is locked up... now she has to respond for the killings in Senkata and Sacaba.”

Other leading figures in the coup government have already fled. Its interior minister Arturo Murillo, who vowed to see Mr Morales spend the rest of his life behind bars, fled to Panama, while its defence minister Fernando Lopez has escaped to Brazil. 

This week its immigration directior Marcel Rivas Falon, who himself threatened journalists including Max Blumenthal and Denis Rogatyuk for their reporting on Bolivia, was arrested for having allowed Mr Murillo and Mr Lopez to get away.

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today