Bolivia’s First Sentencing Court decides not to release Jeanine Áñez due to flight risk

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bolivia’s First Sentencing Court refused on Monday to release former Bolivian President Jeanine Áñez due to flight risk. She will have to remain in jail after being charged with sedition, terrorism, and conspiracy for her role in the framework of the 2019 post-election crisis.

The Court considers that a risk of flight and obstruction persists, so it has determined that the accused will continue her detention in Miraflores prison, where she has denounced verbal and physical aggression by police personnel.

“They are again delaying, suspending, or declaring a fourth intermission in another release hearing of the former president. The objective is to keep her imprisoned, deny her rights, and exhibit her as a political trophy. Abuse and injustice are rampant,” her relatives have denounced on social networks.

Áñez’s relatives, who manage the ex-president’s social networks, published a message on Twitter with the hashtag #SinJusticiaNoHayDemocracia and #PresaPolítica in which it can also be read: “The First Sentencing Court of La Paz refused to release the unjust 281-day detention of the former president, ratifying the systematic violation of her rights and the judicial, political decision already taken to condemn her”.

Her daughter Carolina, who has demanded on numerous occasions the release of her mother, denounced this Friday new aggressions in the Miraflores prison: “It is the police who attacked my mother. Yesterday it was again the director of this prison (Miraflores) who continued verbally assaulting her, demanding that she retract everything I denounced because otherwise, she would retaliate against her”.

At the beginning of December, the Bolivian justice rejected a request presented by Áñez’s defense for the cessation of preventive detention.

Áñez is imprisoned accused of various crimes for her role in the framework of the 2019 post-election crisis. During her time in prison, she has suffered different health problems and even a suicide attempt.