CLAIMS THAT leading opposition figures in Bolivia were involved with an alleged group of terrorists which included Michael Dwyer have been thrown into doubt, raising further questions about the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of the Irishman.
On Monday night prosecutor Marcelo Sosa said he had gathered testimony from four witnesses that detailed the links between political and business leaders from the restive eastern region of Santa Cruz and the group of which Dwyer was a member.
But the lawyer for two of the four men on whose testimony Sosa said he has based his claims said his clients had only ever mentioned one of the 20 men cited by the prosecutor.
Raul Corro said his two clients, Juan Carlos Gueder Bruno and Alcides Mendoza, only gave the name of retired general Lucio Añez as linked to the group, but none of the other prominent figures mentioned by the prosecutor.
Gueder and Mendoza were arrested last week in Santa Cruz and accused of supplying a weapon to the group’s supposed leader, Eduardo Rozsa Flores. Since agreeing to co-operate with the investigation they have been granted house arrest.
Dwyer, Flores and another man were shot dead by police in a hotel in the eastern city of Santa Cruz on April 16th after what the police said was a shoot-out. Two others were arrested at the scene.
Bolivia’s authorities say the group was in league with regional separatists and planned to assassinate Bolivia’s left-wing president, Evo Morales.
The testimony of the third of the four prosecution witnesses has also been called into question. Members of the parliamentary commission which is looking into the case said their interview with Mario Tádic, one of the two men arrested in the hotel where Dwyer was killed, revealed he too was also unaware of the opposition leaders cited by the prosecutor.
“In the almost two hours we were with Tádic, in 95 per cent of the cases he said he had never known, or heard mentioned or seen these people who have been irresponsibly mentioned by the prosecutor,” said Bernardo Montenegro, one of the congressional deputies on the commission, following its interview with Tádic in a prison in the capital, La Paz.
The prosecutor’s fourth witness – described by him as his “key witness” – is Ignacio Villa Vargas, a 51-year-old career criminal who allegedly became involved with Flores’s group.
Leading opposition members in Santa Cruz have questioned both the legality of the police operation on April 16th as well as the methods used by the prosecutor.
The prosecutor has also come under renewed attack from Bolivian jurists who say he has politicised his investigation to favour the government in its bitter struggle with the opposition. “When politics mixes with legal questions, you only arrive at political conclusions,” said Bernardo Wayar, president of the College of Lawyers in La Paz.