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WHAT HAPPENED in room 457 in the Hotel Las Americas on April 16th, 2009, is still quite unclear. What is beyond doubt is that a group from an elite Bolivian state police force, Utarc, led by Capt. Walter Andrade, entered the room in the hotel in Santa Cruz and shot dead Tipperary man Michael Dwyer. Beyond that, official Bolivian and family accounts of events continue, a year and a half later, to diverge irreconcilably and alarmingly.

From the start, Dwyer’s family has challenged police and government versions and despair of getting a credible, let alone any, explanation from the prevaricating Bolivian authorities. Now they have asked UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston to support their and the Government’s demand for an independent international inquiry into his killing and that of his two companions, group leader Croat Eduardo Rozsa Flores, and Hungarian Arpad Magyarosi. Their call deserves strong, urgent diplomatic support.