Bolivian court orders immediate release of Jeanine Áñez in genocide trial.
The former de facto president benefited from a court decision, but will remain imprisoned due to a 10-year sentence for other crimes.
247 - Bolivian Justice determined this Friday (5) the immediate release of former de facto president Jeanine Áñez in the process in which she was accused of genocide. The information was released by RT.
The decision was issued by the Criminal, Anti-Corruption and Violence Against Women Court of Sacaba, which was analyzing the accusation of genocide and attempted genocide, crimes for which the Public Prosecutor's Office was requesting a 30-year prison sentence.
According to the same source, the order establishes the release of the former president "whenever she is not detained for another reason." In practice, Áñez will remain incarcerated, since in June 2022 she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the crimes of breach of duties and resolutions contrary to the Constitution, a decision by the First Anti-Corruption Sentencing Court of La Paz.
Imprisoned since 2021 and accused of a coup d'état.
Áñez has been imprisoned since March 2021, when she was captured in the city of Trinidad and transferred to the Miraflores penitentiary in La Paz. Among the charges against her are terrorism, sedition, conspiracy, and genocide, related to the events of 2019, when Evo Morales left the presidency under military pressure.
After the resignation of the then-president, the then-senator proclaimed herself interim president, a maneuver considered illegal by legal experts and international organizations. Instead of simply calling new elections, as she had promised, Áñez launched her candidacy, but ended up withdrawing in September 2020 due to a sharp drop in popularity.
The Senkata case and the 2019 crackdown.
One of the most serious legal proceedings against the former president is linked to the so-called Senkata case. In the protests that took place between September and December 2019 in Senkata, Huayllani (La Paz), Sacaba (Cochabamba), and Betanzos (Potosí), at least 36 people were killed and more than 800 were injured. Reports from the Ombudsman's Office and the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), linked to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), also documented arbitrary arrests, torture, and violations of freedom of expression and assembly.
