“I request that your authorities indict General Vladimir Yuri Calderon Mariscal (former commander of the Bolivian Police), General Jorge Gonzalo Terceros Lara (former commander of the Bolivian Air Force) for the crime of illicit arms trafficking,” the petition said.
The document, to which the press had access, added that this illicit action is contemplated in “Article 141 quarter of the Bolivian penal code (Sic).”
The document includes the request to inform the judge in charge of the case so that the defendants can exercise their right to defense.
It also requests their preventive detention with the argument that there are sufficient elements of conviction on the masterminding and participation in the crimes by Calderon and Terceros, in addition to “latent procedural risks of flight and obstruction.”
The indications of this case arose from a note signed by Terceros in November 2019 and found in the Foreign Ministry, in which he thanks then Argentinean Ambassador in La Paz Normando Alvarez for sending the ammunition.
A public denunciation on the subject was made in July 2021 by Minister of Government Eduardo del Castillo, who then showed journalists part of the repressive means sent by former Presidents Mauricio Macri, of Argentina, and Lenin Moreno, of Ecuador, after the overthrow of President Evo Morales.
jg/arm/mem/jpm