(La Paz) Former Bolivian President Evo Morales (2006-2019) refused to appear Thursday before the public prosecutor’s office in Tarija (South) to respond to an investigation opened for rape of a minor in 2015, his lawyer announced.
Evo Morales “will not appear” at his summons, declared Me Nelson Cox, denouncing the “illegal” nature of the proceedings initiated against his client.
Mr. Morales, 64, believed he was the victim of “judicial persecution” orchestrated by the government of President Luis Arce, a former ally and now rival for the ruling party’s candidacy for the 2025 presidential election.
According to him, “the traitorous government has unleashed a legal war, the criminalization of social protest and the persecution of the political opposition with the aim of excluding us.”
At the end of September, Evo Morales led a march of several thousand of his supporters who arrived in the capital at the end of a journey punctuated by violent clashes with opponents, and demanded the resignation of the government.
The parents of the alleged victim are also summoned on Thursday in this open investigation for “rape, trafficking and trafficking in human beings”.
During his mandate, the ex-president would have had a relationship with a 15-year-old girl with whom he had a daughter in 2016.
Her parents would have deliberately enrolled her in the “youth movement” in support of Evo Morales “with the sole aim of climbing the political ladder and obtaining advantages […] in exchange for their minor daughter”, which would constitute the offense of “smuggling and trafficking in human beings”.
Evo Morales called these allegations “new lies”, because, he claims, in 2020 he had already been investigated for the same facts where “it was demonstrated that there was no had nothing.”
Furthermore, a deputy close to Mr. Morales announced on Tuesday that a complaint had been filed against President Luis Arce for various offenses stemming from an alleged extramarital affair with a woman whom he presented to the press as a “victim of sexual harassment.
Jessica Villarroel, 24, claimed to have had a relationship with the Bolivian president at the beginning of his mandate, that she became pregnant, but that her pregnancy did not come to term.
“I am not the last, the only victim, we are six victims that he silenced,” she said.
The Bolivian presidency has made no comment on these accusations against Mr. Arce, married and father of three children.