US deports ex-interior minister to face charges for corruption, protester killings

LA PAZ (AP):

A former Bolivian interior minister was deported late Wednesday from Florida to Bolivia, where authorities say he faces charges ranging from breach of duty for illegally importing weapons, to crimes against humanity for overseeing a crackdown on protests in 2019 that caused dozens of deaths.

Arturo Murillo was freed from US prison in June after serving four years in a money laundering case that accused him of taking $532,000 in bribes to help a Florida company win a lucrative contract to sell tear gas to his country’s government.

Just days after Murillo’s release from a Florida prison, he was rearrested and transferred to ICE custody in Miami, where he fought his deportation order for weeks, said a Bolivian diplomat in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.

A judge rejected Murillo’s final appeal and upheld his deportation on July 29. His deportation flight operated by flagship carrier Boliviana de Aviación was due to land in Bolivia’s eastern city of Santa Cruz before dawn yesterday, the Bolivian government said.

Murillo, 61, was one of the most provocative voices in the conservative government of then-interim President Jeanine Áñez, which took power in November 2019 as deadly unrest rocked the country over the disputed re-election of former President Evo Morales to a fourth straight term.

Murillo’s expulsion comes after general elections in Bolivia last month signalled an end to almost two decades of dominance by Morales’ ruling Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party.

Ahead of a presidential runoff in October between two opposition candidates, Murillo’s jailed right-wing allies have clinched a series of legal victories in long-stalled cases first prosecuted under President Luis Arce, an erstwhile ally of Morales whose 2020 election brought down the interim government and restored Bolivia’s left-wing establishment.

After spending years in preventative detention, opposition leader and governor Luis Fernando Camacho was released to house arrest last week pending his trial on charges tied to his involvement in Morales’ ouster.

Another judge annulled charges against Áñez related to her role in the 2019 killings of protesters, diverting the case to a special political process for former heads of state.

As Áñez’s interior minister, Murillo led the brutal crackdown on Morales’ supporters that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights describes as a “massacre”.

As Arce entered office and locked up his former colleagues, Murillo fled to the US, evading arrest.

From Bolivia’s capital of La Paz, the MAS government promised to hold Murillo to account in its waning days.

“We are waiting for him to come and serve the sentences that have been handed down through court proceedings that respect due process,” Justice Minister Jessica Saravia told reporters.