“The Bolivian Police has always demonstrated its professionalism and training in all the tasks that have been entrusted to it, and we believe that it has all the necessary skills and abilities to carry out its work,” said the Minister, Eduardo del Castillo, who added that “it has never stopped fulfilling its task and will comply with everything that is instructed to it” regarding the case involving the first indigenous former president of Bolivia.

The prosecutor of the department of Tarija, Sandra Gutiérrez, confirmed last Tuesday that she formally charged the former president with the crime of human trafficking with the aggravating circumstance that, allegedly, he committed this crime when he was still president. She reported that the arrest warrant against Morales was issued on October 16th for not appearing to testify in response to the complaint against him for the alleged relationship he had in 2015 with a minor, from whom a girl was born.

The Attorney General of the State, Róger Mariaca, said that in light of the official charge of human trafficking and smuggling, the Tarija Departmental Prosecutor’s Office will request six months of preventive detention against Morales.

The former dignitary, meanwhile, declared on his social networks that this was a case of political persecution. “I denounce to the world that I am the victim of a brutal legal war (lawfare) carried out by the Government of Luis Arce who promised to hand me over as a war trophy to the United States,” he wrote, adding that “like many leftist presidents in Latin America, they invent crimes against me; they do not respect the constitutional principles of presumption of innocence and due process; they condemn and shoot at me legally, politically and mediatically (…)”.

Morales points out that the only crime he committed is that, being the first indigenous president, he achieved a country with a fair economy for the people and a Plurinational Bolivia with the inclusion of those always excluded. He also stressed that he did not allow the interference and abuse of the US empire and that he expelled the ambassador of that country and its agencies, which he described as “plunderers and repressors.”

Morales reiterates that he has been suffering a constant bombardment of defamation and insults for some time, and added that “the Government has an army of prosecutors, judges, police and military, who not only seek to eliminate me politically and morally, but physically. That is why they tried to poison me and kill me.”

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