Bolivia’s former interim President Jeanine Anez was arrested on Saturday on terrorism and sedition charges over what the government claims was a coup attempt against her predecessor and political rival Evo Morales.
Police were also rounding up former Ministers who backed the conservative politician’s caretaker government, which was in place for a year after Mr. Morales fled the country in November 2019 amid disputed elections, media reports said.
The arrests came months after Mr. Morales returned to Bolivia from exile on the back of a fresh election victory in October 2020 for the leftist Movement for Socialism (MAS) party he founded. Both the presidency and congress are now under the control of MAS.
“I inform the Bolivian people that Mrs. Jeanine Anez has already been apprehended and is currently in the hands of the police,” government minister Carlos Eduardo del Castillo wrote on Twitter and Facebook.
Mr. Castillo congratulated the police for their “great work” in the “historic task of giving justice” to the Bolivian people.
Bolivia’s public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant on Friday for the conservative politician and others on charges of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy.
Ms. Anez tweeted a copy of the warrant with the response: “The political persecution has begun.”
She added the government was accusing her “of having participated in a coup d’etat that never happened.
In the early hours of Saturday, Bolivian television showed images of Ms. Anez, not handcuffed, arriving at La Paz’s El Alto airport, accompanied by Mr. Castillo and several police officers.
In brief remarks to the press, she denounced her arrest as “illegal.”
It was not immediately known where she was taken.
Ms. Anez’s former Energy Minister Rodrigo Guzman and his justice counterpart Alvaro Coimbra were detained on Friday.
