The Bolivian Minister of Justice and Transparency, Iván Lima, has reported that he has requested a 30-year prison sentence for former President Jeanine Áñez, who is currently under preventive detention for alleged sedition, conspiracy and terrorism.
“Detention should not be the rule, it should be the exception,” he said before stressing that what the Government is looking for is not a four-month detention “but a 30-year prison sentence.”
Thus, he has asserted that the penalty is due to the “bloody massacres and mothers who have been left without children in Senkata, Sacaba, Montero and the southern area of La Paz”, as he has assured in statements to the newspaper ‘El Have to’.
The minister has indicated that the Government plans to activate “four liability trials against Áñez” on Monday. “Four initial liability trials will be presented and, surely, in the coming weeks we will also file criminal proceedings for the bloody massacres based on the advances made by the Public Ministry in the ordinary way against the actors who do not have constitutional privilege “, has clarified.
Along with Áñez, former Minister of Justice Álvaro Coimbra and former Minister of Energy Rodrigo Guzmán have also been placed under preventive detention. The three have been accused of committing the same crimes for having assumed power after the departure of the country of the now former president Evo Morales after losing the support of the Police and Army in November 2019.
The reasons cited by Judge Regina Santa Cruz for this sentence are that there is a risk of flight and that the defendants may interfere in the process. Thus, Áñez will spend this period of detention in the Obrajes Feminine Orientation Center, while Coimbra and Guzmán have been assigned to the San Pedro prison.
