A decide in Bolivia on Sunday ordered former interim president Jeanine Áñez held for 4 months in preventative detention following her arrest on expenses linked to the 2019 ouster of socialist chief Evo Morales which his supporters take into account a coup détat.
Prosecutors accuse Áñez, who assumed the presidency following Morales’ resignation and exile, of terrorism and sedition for the violent social explosion that led to his ouster. She was arrested on Saturday and has referred to as her detention an “abuse,” denying {that a} coup came about.
After a digital listening to as a result of pandemic, decide Regina Santa Cruz backed prosecutors’ request that Áñez be held in a ladies’s jail in La Paz The decide additionally ordered 4 months of preventative arrest for 2 of her former ministers.
Áñez and the 2 ex-ministers heard the ruling from police cells and can be transferred to jail within the coming hours.
Earlier, Áñez referred to as on the Group of American States and the European Union to ship missions to Bolivia to judge what she referred to as “an unlawful detention.”
The arrest of Áñez and warrants towards quite a few different former officers has additional worsened political tensions in a South American nation already torn by a cascade of perceived wrongs suffered by each side. These embody complaints that Morales had grown extra authoritarian with practically 13 years in workplace, that he illegally ran for a fourth reelection after which allegedly rigged the result, that right-wing forces led violent protests that prompted safety forces to push him into resigning after which cracked down on his followers, who themselves protested an alleged coup.
Dozens of individuals had been killed in 2019 in a sequence of demonstrations towards after which for Morales.
On Saturday, Morales despatched a tweet saying, “The authors and accomplices of the dictatorship ought to be investigated and revealed.”
After Morales resigned — or was pushed — and flew overseas, a lot of his key supporters additionally resigned. Áñez, a legislator who had been a number of rungs down the ladder of presidential succession, was vaulted into the interim presidency.
However Morales Motion Towards Socialism remained well-liked. It gained final 12 months’s elections with 55% of the vote below Morales’ chosen candidate Luis Arce, who took the presidency in November.