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Former Bolivian president Jeanine Áñez was sentenced this Friday to 10 years in prison following being found guilty of the crimes of “breach of duties” and “resolutions contrary to the Constitution.”
The illegalities were committed when assuming the interim presidency of Bolivia in 2019, following the army forced him to resign Evo Moralesin an event considered by the ruling party as a “coup d’état”.
The 54-year-old lawyer was tried without any immunity.
“The evidence provided and presented in court has been sufficient to generate in the court the full conviction of their participation and criminal responsibility in the aforementioned crimes, sentencing them (Añez and two other former officials) to 10 years’ imprisonment,” he said. Judge Germán Ramos, according to the Efe agency.
Áñez faced the legal process virtually from jail. According to the authorities, the politician represented a “flight risk”, for which she remained in detention.
The former president questioned the legal process this Friday. She said she was denied “due process” under the law.
In addition, she stated that she was accused of crimes “that she has not committed” and that she was not allowed to defend herself in freedom.
In principle, she had been accused in two cases that she considers part of “political persecution.”
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For which she was sentenced this Friday, the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office called it “coup d’état II.” While she was also facing a case called “coup d’état 1”, which includes charges of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy for the violence that arose following the resignation of Morales, who was seeking a fourth re-election as president.
Who is Jeanine Áñez?
A native of Beni, in the center-north of the country, Áñez came to Bolivian national politics in 2006, when she was elected as a representative of that department in the Constituent Assembly that approved the Constitution in force since 2009.
During this process, he was a member of the Commission for the Organization and Structure of the Country and worked in the part of the Judiciary.
Once the new Magna Carta was approved, Áñez was elected as senator for her region by the now-defunct and opposition alliance Plan Progreso y Convergencia Nacional.
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In his second term, which began in 2015, he stood out for his rejection of a possible fourth term for Morales and for his work in favor of the prevention of femicides and violence once morest women.
Áñez has two children and is married to a Colombian politician, Héctor Hincapié, who was a candidate for the Colombian Senate in 2018 for the Conservative Party.
She was the second woman to hold the presidency of Bolivia. Her predecessor was Lidia Gueiler Tejada, who led the country between 1979 and 1980, when she was overthrown by a military coup.
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