Brazil could offer asylum to Jeanine Áñez, convicted of a coup in Bolivia -newspaper

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said his country is ready to “shelter” former Bolivian de facto president Jeanine Áñez, recently sentenced to ten years in prison for the 2019 coup against the government of Evo Morales.

“Brazil is putting the issue of international relations and human rights into practice to see if it can protect Jeanine Áñez here in Brazil. It is an injustice for a woman imprisoned in Bolivia,” the president said, according to the Bolivian newspaper El Deber.

In alluding to Bolivia, Bolsonaro also attacked his opponent in October’s presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whom he criticized for not referring to the Bolivian judiciary’s ruling against Áñez.

“The former president (Evo Morales) and the current president (Luis Arce) are friends of Lula, and he says absolutely nothing about this case,” Bolsonaro asked.

The Brazilian president considers the offer to Áñez a practice that falls within the framework of international relations and human rights and considers the sentence against the former de facto president an injustice.

Áñez was sentenced to ten years in prison on the 10th of this month after the trial in the so-called “coup d’état II case”, in which she analyzed her decision to take office in November 2019 for violation of duties and decisions contrary to the Constitution and the law.

The sentence was the end of a lengthy process with numerous interruptions – some for technical reasons and others related to Áñez’s health – and represents the first significant verdict on the forced resignation of then-President Evo Morales and the de facto government that replaced him.

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