A Bolivian judge on Friday night ordered the former military chief accused of being responsible for the failed coup attempt two days ago to be sent to a maximum security prison outside La Paz in preventive detention while the events are investigated, the country’s attorney general said.
After a virtual hearing, a precautionary measures magistrate ordered prison for the former Army commander Juan José Zúñiga and also for the former Navy commander, Vice Admiral Juan Arnez, and for the officer Edisión Irahola, the Bolivian attorney general indicated without further details. , César Siles.
They are the first three defendants of the 21 detained until Friday for their participation in the failed coup last Wednesday. The hearing of the other detainees will be held this weekend.
Zuñiga faces charges of armed insurrection and terrorism that carry sentences of between 15 and 30 years, Siles said.
Earlier, relatives of the detainees claimed that they had received threats. Jimena Silva stated at the doors of the detention center that since her husband was arrested she had received intimidating anonymous calls.
“They are messing with our children, with us, because they tell us: they speak or say something… They are closing doors on us,” Silva said.
Silva, a mother of three, sits crying with her mother and brother outside a police detention center waiting to see if there is any news of her husband, Luis Domingo Balanza.
Balanza, a military commander with more than 15 years, is among the 21 detained after a group of uniformed officers and armored vehicles attacked the government palace in what authorities considered a failed coup d’état.
Several families, visibly confused and anxious, stood outside the detention center where their relatives were being held on Friday, insisting that they knew nothing about what happened on Wednesday in Plaza Murillo, in front of the government headquarters. They insisted that their relatives were simply “following orders” or carrying out what they had been told was a “military exercise.”
On Friday, the government raised the number of people detained to 21, including former commander Zúñiga, as the alleged leader of the failed coup attempt.
The images broadcast on television in Bolivia on Wednesday shocked the world as an armored military vehicle attacked the government palace in La Paz, the country’s government headquarters, and then as the military retreated when President Luis Arce stood up to the coup attempt.
Zúñiga’s lawyer, Stiven Orellana, told The Associated Press that prosecutors were accusing the military commander of terrorism and armed uprising. He said he could not provide further details of the case.
Around 200 uniformed personnel took part in the military deployment, Bolivia’s representative to the Organization of American States said on Thursday.
Bolivian Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo, in an interview with AP, said that it is possible that there is “some kind of disagreement with these people,” referring to complaints from the relatives of the detainees, but that “it is not a normal or regular situation that the wives of these soldiers are accustomed to experiencing.”
“However, we need to give the people a guarantee that this will not happen again,” he stressed, referring to the investigations to find the culprits. “We need to sentence those people who were active participants, the ideologues, the indirect authors, the accomplices, the cover-ups of this group of people who had the audacity to try to seize power by force,” he added.
Del Castillo was joined by hundreds of protesters outside the detention center and government buildings on Friday, holding signs calling Zúñiga a “traitor.”
Inside, families were crying and telling another version.
Silva and his mother Daniela assured that their family was financially devastated without income to take care of three children. The family is one of those who defend that his father was simply following orders, which required him to leave a course he was taking online and go to the square where the government palace is located. Silva stressed that her husband later turned himself in.
How are we going to feed our family?” asked Daniela, who asked not to be identified by her last name given the threats she said she had received. “I am worried about my son’s future. What future can someone who has been implicated, someone who has already been stained, shown on television have?”
And he added: “My son is not a villain… He is just a subordinate. He safeguarded his assets and they took advantage of him.”
For her part, Nubia Barbery said that her husband, Colonel Raúl Barbery Muiba, received orders from Zúñiga to carry out a “military exercise.” As soon as he entered the plaza, according to what Barbery told his wife in a later call, he left there, accusing Zúñiga of having deceived him.
In Photos | Strong security presence at the Casa del Pueblo after coup attempt in Bolivia
Calm returned to the streets of La Paz, in Bolivia, after a military uprising against President Luis Arce that generated uncertainty and political chaos.
The families’ claims add further confusion to the doubts that began to emerge when Zúñiga said on Wednesday that President Arce knew about the failed coup attempt.
Before being arrested, he alleged without giving any evidence that the Bolivian president ordered him to organize something to raise his popularity in the face of recent protests in Bolivia due to economic discontent and internal political struggle in the ruling party. As a result of these statements, the opposition began to claim that it had been a “self-coup.”
Arce appeared on Thursday for the first time after what happened and emphatically denied the allegations. He said that the then Army commander had acted on his behalf.
For months, the president has been engaged in an internal confrontation within the ruling party with the historic leader of the Movement Towards Socialism, Evo Morales, in view of next year’s presidential elections in which Morales wants to run again.
It is not clear if the accusations against Arce are real or if, as the president said, the general who led the failed coup attempt did so for his own benefit.
The truth is that some Bolivians were still outraged by the chaotic scene on Wednesday.
Cintia Ramos, 31, who identifies herself as a supporter of President Arce, said that Zúñiga “must pay the highest penalty for having attacked the Bolivian people.”
And although the families claim that their military relatives are innocent, for Ramos what happened could not have been planned by a single person and he suspected that he must have had high-level allies.
Police led Zúñiga to the detention center in handcuffs on Friday.
Shortly before, his wife, Graciela Arzacibia, was waiting with her eyes downcast for the soldier at the detention center. She was carrying a small bag with some food and said she was worried about her 6-year-old son who on Friday still believed that his father was actually at work and not in custody.
“I ask that you be considerate of the families. I have a 6 year old son. They are intimidating families. How the families are to blame,” she told the AP timidly.
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