IRISHMAN MICHAEL Dwyer, shot dead by anti-terrorist police in Bolivia last April, was shot through the heart with a bullet designed to cause massive internal injuries, and he was most likely in bed at the time, an inquest has heard.
Some 51 shots were fired during what Bolivia’s ambassador to Britain and Ireland, Beatrice Suveron, yesterday described as a “shoot-out” in a hotel in Santa Cruz. She alleged two guns had been found in Mr Dwyer’s room.
A Bolivian investigation into the incident on April 16th last, she said, had found that Mr Dwyer’s passage from Ireland, and that of two other men, had been paid for by a Bolivian businessman currently charged with terrorism offences.
Ms Suveron also alleged that the group Mr Dwyer was with when he was shot dead was plotting to kill political figures, including Bolivian president Evo Morales.
She said they had already caused an explosion at the home of the Catholic cardinal of Santa Cruz before the police moved in on them.
The police had also found explosives and guns owned by them, she claimed.
Ms Suveron said the leader of the group, Eduardo Rozsa Flores (49), who was killed with Mr Dwyer, was being paid money for his men by Santa Cruz businessmen who wanted to secure independence from Bolivia for Santa Cruz.
She said the Bolivian government would co-operate with an independent international investigation into the events of last April, as has been requested by the Dwyer family.
State Pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy told Dublin county coroner Dr Kieran Geraghty that a postmortem carried out in Bolivia on Mr Dwyer’s remains concluded he had been shot six times when in fact he had been shot once. It had mistaken minor marks for bullet entry wounds.
She also pointed to shortcomings in tests that revealed gunshot residue was on Mr Dwyer’s hands, suggesting he had been shooting guns at or about the time of death.
Dr Cassidy agreed the results of such tests were “not terribly reliable” unless it could be guaranteed the police who used guns during the anti- terrorist operation had not touched Mr Dwyer’s remains.
From the trajectory of the bullet through the 25-year-old Tipperary man’s body it was clear the fatal shot had been fired from “a few feet” away by somebody standing above or over him.
“It could have been that he was in bed and sat up,” she said. The jury returned an open verdict.
Mr Dwyer’s mother, Caroline, said her son, a construction management graduate, had gone to Bolivia last November to take part in a bodyguard course.
He went with people he knew through his security work. He decided to remain on in Bolivia after those men returned to Ireland because he had found security work in Santa Cruz.
Mr Dwyer worked as a team leader for Kildare firm Integrated Risk Management Services (I-RMS) at the Shell gas pipeline site in Co Mayo until last October.
I-RMS managing director Terry Downes told the inquest he knew nothing about the bodyguard course his former employees were attending until after news of Mr Dwyer’s death broke.