Incarcerated for thirteen months, Jeanine Añez is judged for “coup d’état” after the precipitated departure of Evo Morals in November 2019. It risks twelve years in prison.
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After two unsuccessful attempts marked by adjourned or shortened hearings, the trial for non-compliance with the Constitution against Jeanine Añez, former Acting President of Bolivia (November 2019-November 2020), opened Monday, April 4th . Impaired, suffering from high tension, the former 54-year-old senator attended his trial – which takes place at a distance – from the prison for women of Miraflores, district of the center of La Paz, the administrative capital, where it He has been maintained in pre-trial detention since March 13, 2021. Outside, dozens of people have shown, wearing signs “nor forgetting or forgive” in memory of the victims of two massacres having occurred during his short term.
The previous week, after defense lawyers had raised a series of procedural irregularities and following an anxiety crisis of M me Añez, the session had been suspended. This time, she resumed, but little information filtered. Journalists, yet duly accredited, were prevented from attending the hearing.
Jeanine Añez is continued for “decisions contrary to the Constitution” and “failure to duty”, when it was still vice-president of the Senate. For the first time, justice must examine the presumed irregular acts, committed on 12 November 2019 when it had self-proclaimed state cheft, following a vacancy of power provoked by the cascading resignation of President Evo Morales. and its constitutional successors: the Vice-President, the President of the Senate and the President of the Chamber of Deputies.
m. Morales had resigned two days earlier, in the midst of violence and after intense mobilizations denouncing presumed fraudulent elections after its contested re-election for a fourth term. Several contradictory reports have been published since, and if fraud has not been proven, it has not been discarded. A mutiny of the police and the “suggestion”, come from the armed forces, to resign had precipitated his departure, then his exile from the country. A qualified sequence of “coup d’état” by the supporters of Evo Morales and by the current government, led by his successor, Luis Arce.
Another trial
Five military officers also appear in this trial, as well as an ex-police commander; Four of them are on the run. Even before the start of the trial, two other officers were guilty of “complicity in the offense of default” in order to benefit from an accelerated procedure and to protect their families, according to the declarations of their relatives, offend for which They were sentenced to three years in prison on February 18th.
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