Fmr. Bolivian president Lozada to face trial in Florida over human rights abuses

Daily Mail
Wed, 21 Feb 2018 12:26 UTC

Former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, seen here in a September 30 2003 picture, is to go on trial in Florida for alleged human rights abuses during 2003 protests against his government.

Former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada goes on trial in Florida next month in a civil suit over his role in the killing of more than 50 civilians during disturbances in 2003, court documents showed Wednesday.

It would be the first time a former head of state will face trial in the US for human rights abuses, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is among a team of lawyers representing relatives of eight of the victims.

The suit alleges that Sanchez de Lozada and his defense minister, Carlos Sanchez Berzain, planned the extra-judicial killings by Bolivian security forces.

A federal judge ruled that the two will face trial in Fort Lauderdale, Florida starting March 5 under a law that permits civil suits in US courts for extrajudicial killings.

"We look forward to this historic opportunity to have our day in court," said Teofilo Baltazar Cero, whose pregnant wife was among those killed.

Known as the "October massacre," the deaths came after La Paz was cut off by massive protests led by Evo Morales, now the country's president.

Armed government troops were deployed on October 11, 2003 to open a route through blockaded roads for diesel and gasoline shipments into the Bolivian capital. Witnesses say they opened fire on civilians.

The deaths and ensuing crisis forced Sanchez de Lozada's resignation on October 17, and he fled the country the same day for the United States.

The lawsuit alleges that he and Sanchez Berzain had planned for months to crush the political opposition through the use of deadly force.

Source: Agence-France Presse

Comment: The relatives of those killed may have their day in court, but whether justice will be served is questionable:

Obama administration refuses extradition Bolivia's ex-president on genocide charges

In October 2003, the intensely pro-US president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, sent his security forces to suppress growing popular protests against the government's energy and globalization policies. Using high-powered rifles and machine guns, his military forces killed 67 men, women and children, and injured 400 more, almost all of whom were poor and from the nation's indigenous Aymara communities. Dozens of protesters had been killed by government forces in the prior months when troops were sent to suppress them.

The resulting outrage over what became known as "the Gas Wars" drove Sanchez de Lozada from office and then into exile in the United States, where he was welcomed by his close allies in the Bush administration. He has lived under a shield of asylum in the US ever since.
[..]
The former leader - a multimillionaire mining executive who, having been educated in the US, spoke Spanish with a heavy American accent - was a loyal partner in America's drug war in the region. More importantly, the former leader himself was a vehement proponent and relentless crusader for free trade and free market policies favored by the US: policies that the nation's indigenous poor long believed (with substantial basis) resulted in their impoverishment while enriching Bolivia's small Europeanized elite.

It was Sánchez de Lozada's forced exile that ultimately led to the 2006 election and 2009 landslide re-election of Morales, a figure the New York Times in October 2003 described as one "regarded by Washington as its main enemy". Morales has been as vehement an opponent of globalization and free trade as Sánchez de Lozada was a proponent, and has constantly opposed US interference in his region and elsewhere (in 2011, Morales called for the revocation of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize as a result of the intervention in Libya).

See also: Bolivian 'Day of Dignity' commemorates 'Black October' massacre