Warning That Risk of Assassination Remains in Bolivia

Bolivian President Evo Morales won a referendum to adopt reforms in the Latin American state on October 21, 2008. The South American country has been subjected to US destabilization efforts.
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Warning that risk of assassination remains in Bolivia

LA PAZ, April 19. – Bolivian Vice President Alvaro García Linera stated today that the life of President Evo Morales and the state itself are still at risk of an attack on the part of a terrorist group that planned an assassination attempt that was uncovered this week in Santa Cruz, the EFE reported.

The life of President Evo has been and continues to be at risk, García Linera said.

"The life of President Evo (Morales) has been and is still at risk," García Linera said, speaking on the state television channel about the political anti-terrorist operation in which three international hired killers were shot and other detained.

The vice president also stated that "the security and unity of the state and the lives of Bolivians "continues to be at risk from a conspiracy of which "barely 10% or less has come out into the public light."

During the police intervention that took place in a Santa Cruz hotel, Romanian Magyarosi Arpak, Irishman Dwayer Michael Martin, and Bolivian Eduardo Rózsa Flores were shot dead and Bolivian-Croat Mario Tadic Astorga and Hungarian Elot Tóazo were captured.

The five were part of a group that, according to García Linera, planned to kill the president and other members of Morales’ cabinet, including the vice president himself.

He pointed out that the mercenaries are masterminded by a Bolivian whose " final objective was either a violent coup or some kind of regional fragmentation," by generating a "wave of violence and general chaos," before forming armed groups.

"You have to get fom the tentacles to the head," the vice president said. He did not want to speculate on the identity of those responsible although he did point to "a politically defeated right that does not trust the democratic way of changing power."

Translated by Granma International