by Enrico Tortolano
BOLIVIAN officials have asked the United States to extradite Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada over dozens of deaths. The former Bolivian President is accused of instructing the military to attack anti-government demonstrators in 2003 – a massacre in which at least 65 people died.
A legal extradition request was also made for Carlos Sanchez Barzain, the ex-defence minister, and Jorge Berindoague, an ex-oil minister. According to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Consuelo Ponce the 2,700-page request charging the exiled leader and his former ministers with genocide and fraud was delivered on November 10.
Lozada resigned in October 2003 after only 14 months in office when security forces opened fire on demonstrators – mostly Aymara Indians – protesting against his plan to sell natural gas to foreign countries through Chile, with which Bolivia has a century-old border dispute. Some of the demonstrations were led by the current Bolivian President Evo Morales, an outspoken trade union leader at the time.
The ex-president’s lawyer, Howard Gutman, claims: “The actions taken by the Sanchez de Lozada government were constitutional, lawful and appropriate.”
Although the indictment is damning, the chances of the US, which has a history of backing right-wing regimes with appalling human rights records in Latin America, extraditing Sanchez de Lozada are remote.
Nevertheless, the families of those killed and injured in the protests are optimistic. “It doesn’t matter where he escapes to,” said Eloy Rojas, whose eight-year-old daughter was killed when a soldier’s bullet fired during the protests flew in the window of his family’s home. “He must pay for the damage he has caused.”
