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LA PAZ, Bolivia (AFP) — Bolivian ex-president Jeanine Anez was sentenced Friday to 10 years in jail, greater than a 12 months after her arrest for an alleged plot — dismissed as fictional by many — to oust her rival and predecessor Evo Morales.
Anez, who has been held in pre-trial detention since March 2021, has persistently denounced what she calls political persecution.
The previous interim chief will serve 10 years in a girls’s jail in La Paz, the executive capital’s First Sentencing Court docket introduced in a call that comes three months after her trial started.
Convicted of crimes “opposite to the structure and a dereliction of duties,” Anez was sentenced to “a punishment of 10 years” over accusations stemming from when she was a senator, earlier than turning into president.
Prosecutors had requested for a 15-year jail sentence.
The previous chief had already introduced she would attraction if convicted, saying: “We is not going to cease there, we are going to go earlier than the worldwide justice system.”
Additionally sentenced to 10 years had been the previous head of the armed forces, William Kaliman, and the previous head of the police, Yuri Calderon, each of whom are on the run.
Anez nonetheless faces a separate, pending courtroom case for sedition and different costs associated to her quick presidential stint.
At first of her presidency, Anez had known as within the police and navy to revive order. The post-election battle induced 22 deaths, in accordance with the Inter-American Fee on Human Rights (IACHR).
For that, Anez additionally faces genocide costs, which carry jail sentences of between 10 and 20 years.
– ‘Political persecution’ –
Proper-wing Anez turned Bolivia’s interim president in November 2019 after Morales, who claimed to have gained a fourth consecutive time period as president, fled the nation within the face of mass protests in opposition to alleged electoral fraud.
The Group of American States (OAS) mentioned on the time it had discovered clear proof of voting irregularities in favor of Morales, who had been in energy for 14 years.
Many potential successors to Morales — all members of his MAS celebration — additionally resigned and fled, leaving opposition member Anez, then vice-president of the Senate, subsequent in line.
Just about unknown, the lawyer and former tv presenter proclaimed herself interim president of the Andean nation on November 12, 2019, two days after Morales’ resignation.
The Constitutional Court docket acknowledged Anez’s mandate as interim, caretaker president, however MAS members disputed her legitimacy.
Elections had been held a 12 months later, and gained by Luis Arce — a Morales protege.
With the presidency and congress each firmly in MAS management, Morales returned to Bolivia in November 2020.
After handing over the presidential reins to Arce, Anez was arrested in March 2021, accused of irregularly assuming energy.
The arrest occurred within the metropolis of Trinidad, situated within the nation’s Beni division, the place she was born and the place she returned after her tenure in workplace.
“I denounce earlier than Bolivia and the world that in an act of abuse and political persecution, the MAS authorities has ordered my arrest,” she mentioned on Twitter on the time.
In detention, Anez would go on to hold out starvation strikes.
Shortly earlier than the beginning of her trial in mid-February, she echoed the identical sentiment, stating: “I assumed the presidency of Bolivia with out asking for it, with out in search of it and even much less anticipating it… with the only mission of organizing elections and calming a rustic in disaster.”
In keeping with certainly one of Anez’s attorneys, Luis Guillen, the truth that a number of instances had been being pursued in opposition to her on the identical time violated the regulation.
He moreover maintained that the courtroom that weighed in was not able to deciding constitutional issues, and that the previous president would wish making an attempt in congress.
The IACHR described the 22 deaths that occurred initially of Anez’s tenure as “massacres,” and located they indicated “severe violations of human rights.”
Not like the opposite accusations in opposition to Anez, the case shall be handled by congress, which is able to determine whether or not or to not maintain a trial.
© Agence France-Presse
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