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La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, December 18, 2024, p. 24

Peace. The former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, said yesterday that he was victim of a brutal legal war orchestrated by the current president and former ally Luis Arce, after the prosecutor’s office ordered his arrest for a case of alleged abuse of a minor when he was in power.

Morales is sheltered with the support of his supporters in the Tropics of Cochabamba, his political stronghold, and will not surrender to justice, his lawyer Nelson Cox confirmed to AFP.

The 65-year-old coca leader was charged with the crime of aggravated human traffickingThe prosecutor’s office reported yesterday.

I denounce to the world that I am a victim of a brutal legal war carried out by the government of Luis Arce, which promised to hand me over as a war trophy to the United States.wrote Morales in X.

With the accusation, the Public Ministry requested preventive detention for six months in a public prison.

Despite the fact that justice disqualified him from being a presidential candidate again, the former president insists on his intention to compete in the 2025 elections.

The prosecution’s hypothesis is that Morales, who governed the country between 2006 and 2019, would have committed the crime of treats of a minor, following an alleged arrangement with the parents of a 15-year-old teenager.

A case that began in 2015

The scandal dates back to 2015. According to the file, Morales had a daughter with the alleged victim in 2016.

According to the case documents, the minor’s parents enrolled her in the youth guard of Morales with the sole purpose of political escalation and obtaining benefits in exchange for his youngest daughter.

The father has been detained preventively since October.

Without directly alluding to the case, Morales also indicated that he was a target of a constant barrage of defamation and insults. In October he reported an attempt on his life at the hands of the security forces.

The government has an army of prosecutors, judges, police and military who not only seek to eliminate me politically and morally, but physically.he remarked.

Members of his defense maintain that the case has already been investigated and filed.