New investigation in Bolivia against former president Evo Morales

The Bolivian Prosecutor's Office has announced the opening of a new investigation against the former left-wing president Evo Morales, in government from 2006 to 2019, for alleged cases of murder and torture linked to a police operation that cost the lives of three European citizens in 2009.

At the time, a commando of agents broke into a hotel in Santa Cruz and killed three men: the Bolivian-Croatian Eduardo Rózsa Flores, the Irishman Michael Dwyer and the Romanian of Hungarian origin Arpad Magyarosi. Two others survived and reported being tortured after their arrest. The then executive claimed that the group was preparing a separatist movement, financed by the right.

The families and victims have meanwhile brought the matter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which in 2021 ruled that the Bolivian state had committed human rights violations and forwarded the case to the Inter-American Court.

Having taken refuge in his stronghold of Chapare, Morales is already the recipient of two arrest warrants: one for inciting the road blockades that paralyzed the country in May and June, the other for child trafficking.