Evo Morales will not appear before the Prosecutor’s Office for the alleged abuse of minors because “his life is at risk”
The former president of Bolivia Evo Morales will not appear this Thursday to testify before the Prosecutor’s Office in Tarija for the case of alleged abuse of minors and human trafficking for which he is being investigated, claiming that his life is in danger.
“The objective is to arrest Evo Morales. The president had every intention of coming to testify, but his life is at risk. He has received death threats,” his circle of allies have assured, according to the newspaper ‘El Deber’.
For his part, Nelson Cox, one of the lawyers on Morales’ team, has confirmed that the former president will not attend the meeting he had planned this Thursday with the Prosecutor’s Office in Tarija as there are not sufficient guarantees for him to do so safely, despite the deployment of up to 600 officers for this purpose.
While waiting to find out whether Morales will be able to appear virtually, the Minister of Justice, César Siles, announced yesterday that if he did not appear, an arrest warrant could be issued against him.
An eventual arrest would further inflame the spirits between supporters of Morales and Arce, who have been involved in a long-standing dispute for years that not only divides the left in Bolivia, but also raises serious doubts about the immediate political future.
Hours before he was due to appear, Morales again took to his X account to reaffirm his innocence and accuse his former ally Luis Arce of reopening a case that had already been archived and that was fabricated by the “de facto government” of Jeanine Áñez.
“By fabricating accusations, twisting the laws and with the complicity of hitmen of justice, they intend to detain us and end our lives. (…) It is all the product of the desperation of the government that has no response to the crisis and also no electoral possibility,” he wrote hours earlier on X.
According to the investigation, Morales could be responsible for a crime of child abuse and human trafficking for acts he committed in 2016 when he was president of Bolivia, for a relationship with a 15-year-old girl, from whom a girl was born. Her parents have also been summoned to testify this Thursday.
