September 10, 2012
Justice for "Black October" Up for Grabs
Will Goni be Extradited Back to Bolivia?
by CHELLIS GLENDINNING
Cochabamba, Bolivia.
On 6 September, the U.S. government denied a 2008 petition from Bolivia to extradite ex-President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada to the Andean nation to face long-standing criminal charges.
Sánchez de Lozada, known on the home front as “Goni,” fled the country in 2003 as a result of massive popular uprisings. Such a victory astounded social movements that were feeling strapped by recently established legal mechanisms: in 1995 the World Trade Organization had been established with the power to deny the rights of any person, community, or nation-state to challenge the supremacy of corporations in their transnational marketplace, and the capacity of the people of Bolivia to go to battle to protect their own water and gas against privatization – and to eject a corrupt government in the process — was one of the earlier skirmishes to restore hope for popular movements.
Inside Bolivia, Goni is regarded as one of the nation’s shadier dictators. The charge against him is genocide: commanding a vicious military attack in October 2003 on protesters and citizens, resulting in 67 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and a general state of public terror. He is also thought to have embezzled huge sums of government funds from the central bank, and some believe that he was involved in high-level narco-trafficking.
Since his seat-of-the-pants flight out of the El Alto airport, though, the ex-president has resided in luxurious digs in Florida, close to his ex-ministers Carlos Sánchez Berzaín and Jorge Berindoague. His U.S. lawyer, Ana C. Reyes, explained the rejection, declaring that the petition to extradite was motivated by “politics.” “The methods adopted by a democratically-elected government in 2003,” she insisted, “were appropriate and necessary for the dangers to the public given a dangerous situation with hostages and rebellious armies causing chaos and threatening lives.”
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/10/will-goni-be-extradited-back-to-bolivia/
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