Skip to main content

Imprisoned Bolivian ex-dictator Garcia Meza dead at 88

bolivian

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA: Bolivian ex-dictator Luis Garcia Meza, who was serving a lengthy prison sentence for crimes committed after his 1980 military coup, died on Sunday in a La Paz hospital at the age of 88, his attorney told local media.

Garcia Meza died of cardiac arrest and respiratory failure at the Cossmil military hospital in La Paz, where the former general had spent more than a third of his 30-year prison sentence, attorney Frank Campero said.

Garcia Meza took power in a violent military coup in July 1980, near the end of the period of military dictatorships in Latin America.

Scores of people, including socialist leader Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, were killed as his forces seized power. Quiroga’s body was never found.

A fierce anti-communist, Garcia Meza tortured opponents and launched a sweeping crack down on leftist dissenters. The regime even sought advice from Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, who helped set up a death squad.

In one notable case eight leaders of Bolivia’s leftist MIR party were tortured and murdered by paramilitary operatives in the Sopocachi neighborhood of La Paz in January 1981. The sole survivor, Gloria Ardaya, escaped the slaughter by hiding under a bed.

‘Protected by the army’

The regime however was also characterized by rampant corruption and its close links to drug trafficking. The dictator’s interior minister, Luis Arce Gomez, was so closely linked with narcotrafficking that he was nicknamed the “minister of cocaine.”

Garcia Meza was deposed in August 1981, after 13 months in power.

In April 1993 the ex-dictator was sentenced to 30 years behind bars for the killings and abuses during his time in office, but he avoided prison by fleeing the country.

Authorities caught up with him in Brazil in March 1995. He was quickly arrested and extradited to Bolivia, where he was sent to a maximum security prison.

Arce Gomez, also sentenced to 30 years behind bars, first served time in a US prison on drug trafficking charges. In 2009 he was returned to Bolivia to serve the 30 year sentence.

With Garcia Meza’s death “we have lost highly valuable information to solve crimes against humanity,” said Julio Llanos, a representative of a rights group representing dictatorship victims.

Another rights group, Asofamd, posted an angry message on Facebook.

“We regret that JUSTICE has not been done!” the group said. Garcia Meza “died protected by the army, sheltered in the care of Cossmil,” the military hospital, the statement read.

‘Did not kill’

Attorney Campero said that in 2009 his ailing client left two letters, one addressed to his family and the other to the nation. Two reporters also filmed a documentary that was placed under embargo until his death.

The letters and the documentary state “that he did not kill, that he did not rob his country,” Campero said.

Garcia Meza and Arce Gomez were also among the defendants in a lawsuit filed in 2015 by an Italian judge against 30 Latin American ex-military and civilians for the death of 43 opponents of Italian origin.

In January 2017 eight of the defendants, including the two Bolivians, were sentenced in absentia to life in prison for their role in Operation Condor, the network that South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s set up to track down each others leftist dissidents.

The post Imprisoned Bolivian ex-dictator Garcia Meza dead at 88 appeared first on ARYNEWS.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Accountability court hears assets case against Ishaq Dar

ISLAMABAD: An accountability court in Islamabad on Wednesday resumed the hearing of a reference filed against former finance minister Ishaq Dar by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for allegedly accumulating assets beyond his known sources of income.  Judge Muhammad Bashir is recording the statement of a prosecution witness, Ishtiaq Ahmed. At the previous hearing, the accountability judge had reserved his verdict on an application filed by two co-accused seeking acquittal in the case. Naeem Mehmood and Mansoor Rizvi, who are directors of Dar’s companies, had filed the application requesting the judge to exonerate them from all charges for want of evidence. Qazi Misbah, the counsel for the two co-accused, contended the prosecution has failed to provide compelling evidence to prove the allegations leveled against his clients. The third co-accused President National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), Saeed Ahmed, had already filed an application before the court for his acquittal wh...
Post a Comment
Read more

SFA raids several restaurants in Karachi, imposes fine

KARACHI: The Sindh Food Authority (SFA) on Friday raided several restaurants in city’s North Nazimabad area over unhygienic conditions, ARY News reported. According to the SFA, one of the restaurants was found utilizing the used oil multiple times. The items were also not properly frozen while crockery for serving the food was also not clean. The team imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the restaurant. The SFA team found hygiene standards were sheerly compromised in food making to the core. The food inspectors said they had previously served notices to the food outlets, but the restaurant owners apparently turned a blind eye to it. Raids were also conducted in district Malir and Gulshan-e-Hadeed. Sanitary conditions and lack of fumigation facilities were found at the restaurants in some of the Malir outlets. The SFA team also raided a bakery ‘Friend Bakers’ and imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 over poor hygiene.  Similarly another roadside restaurant was fined Rs 20,000 for neglecting he...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trump says US generals feel Beirut blast was likely an ‘attack’

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Tuesday cast a massive explosion in Beirut as a possible attack, despite statements by Lebanese leaders that it was likely caused by highly explosive material that had been stored at warehouses in the capital for years. “The United States stands ready to assist Lebanon,” Trump said at a White House briefing of Tuesday’s explosion, which killed at least 78 people and injured thousands. “It looks like a terrible attack.” When asked later about his depiction of the explosion, Trump said that he had met with some U.S. generals who feel the blast was not “some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event.” He told reporters that according to these unnamed generals “they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.” The Pentagon referred questions to the White House. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said it was unclear where Trump was receiving his information but that initial information did not appear...
Post a Comment
Read more