García-Sayán runs into 'prisoners' on strike and judges who release murderers

The special rapporteur for the independence of judges and lawyers of the UN will begin his official activities from today in the country. He will meet with authorities and members of civil society.

After his arrival in Bolivia yesterday, the special rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers of the United Nations, Diego García-Sayán, found that former president Jeanine Áñez and two activists opposed to the Government, who declared themselves political prisoners, are in hunger strike. In addition, he arrived in the country shortly after the scandal uncovered by the release of rapists and murderers sentenced to 30 years in prison and without the right to pardon by Bolivian judges.

Precisely today marks the seventh day of the voluntary fast in which former president Jeanine Áñez is found, imprisoned 11 months ago in the Miraflores prison, accused of incurring in an alleged coup in November 2019, when she assumed the Presidency after the resignation of Evo Morales, Vice President Álvaro García Linera and the heads of the Senate and Deputies. Áñez demands to defend herself from her in freedom and through a trial of responsibilities.

Through her legal defense, Áñez formalized the request for a hearing with the special rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers of the United Nations.

The lawyer Alaín de Canedo explained that it will be the representative who decides whether or not to visit the former authority in the Miraflores prison, where he is serving almost a year of preventive detention “A meeting with the rapporteur has been requested, we understand that this has been accepted favorably.

 It is up to Diego García-Sayán to set a day, time, the former president has expressly requested that she be visited in the Miraflores prison,” De Canedo said at a press conference.

The hunger strike was joined by the member of the Cochala Youth Resistance (RJC), Mario Antonio Bascopé, who is in preventive detention in the San Roque prison in Sucre, and assumes that his imprisonment is a "political revenge" for leading the protests against fraud in the 2019 elections, which led to the resignation and departure of former Bolivian President Evo Morales.

The former civic leader of Riberalta, Katriel Müller Justiniano also initiated the extreme measure "until the last consequences" in the prison of that city of Beni. He was imprisoned in November of last year after protesting the law against the legitimization of illicit profits, which was finally withdrawn from the Legislative Assembly by President Luis Arce Catacora.

Meanwhile, in recent weeks the case of femicide, murderer and serial rapist Richard Choque was uncovered. This man had been sentenced to 30 years in prison without the right to pardon for the kidnapping and murder in 2013 of a 20-year-old girl, Blanca Rubí Limachi.

At the end of 2019, the Judge of the First Criminal Execution of La Paz, Rafael Alcón, granted Choque house arrest because he presented a certificate that he had diabetes, good behavior, and because there was no fiscal objection. Later, the offender confessed that he sent the judge $3,000 and a bottle of whiskey.

The case has reached international relevance, because the Police discovered that he had killed and buried two other young girls in his own house, and also two men after he was released by Judge Alcón.

The Spanish newspaper El País reported that Choque confessed that he killed those women and raped more than 70. "His capture has also brought to light a network of corruption that supposedly affects judges for letting murderers go free," he said. The country.

In this context, the Judicial Council has so far detected at least five cases of sentenced persons who were released by former judge Rafael Alcón, three men and two women, and another 16 who received the same benefit in another court in La Paz. This is how justice is in Bolivia, and the facts jump out before the eyes of the United Nations envoy.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) expert, César Muñoz, tweeted that “The UN rapporteur on judicial independence is visiting Bolivia. He will find, precisely, that there is no judicial independence. We urge you to support the work of Bolivian civil society in favor of justice without political interference”.

The former president and former president of the Supreme Court of Justice Eduardo Rodríguez Veltzé pointed out that, after the visit, García-Sayán must “report to the United Nations delegate for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. Then, this office, based in Geneva, must make its concern known to the relevant body, and if possible, let the General Assembly of the main multilateral body, the United Nations, know that it has a serious concern about the state of justice. in Bolivia, unless Diego García-Sayán finds another reality, but I don't think that's the case”.

For his part, the former Minister of Justice during the administration of Jorge Quiroga and member of the commission of notables for the transformation of justice, Carlos Goitia, hopes that “García-Sayán will come and reaffirm that justice in the country is not independent and give us an orientation on how it is that in other places or states these evils have been avoided, they have been corrected and democracies were strengthened based on these measures.”

The Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, admitted that this is why a judicial reform is proposed. “It is the State that we have inherited, it comes from the creation of the Judicial Branch. The criticism made by the rapporteur, when he finishes his work, will be the basis for the construction of a strategy that leads us to the solution of the problem”, he asserted.

He denounced, in an interview with the Influential program of EL DEBER Radio, that it is true that the International Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) concluded in its report that politics interferes with justice in the country, but that it was referring precisely to the government of Jeanine Añez. However, the GIEI stated in its report that political interference in justice is an evil that goes back much further and was a problem of the Morales government.

The agenda starts this morning. Vice President David Choquehuanca, Foreign Minister Rogelio Mayta and Minister Lima will welcome him. He will visit the presidents of both chambers and the Plural Justice commissions of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to collect impressions from the representatives of the country's political forces.

On Wednesday he will travel to Sucre where he will meet with the senior magistrates of the Judicial Branch and the State Attorney General's Office. On Friday, February 18, he will hold virtual meetings with members and judicial authorities from Santa Cruz, Oruro and Chuquisaca, it is not ruled out that he will do so with other regions.

Lima pointed out that he will meet with three governors, including the governor of Santa Cruz, virtually. He will have 40 meetings with representatives of civil society. On February 22, he will meet with the president and offer a final press conference.