Bolivian Ex-President Charged for Handing Missiles to U.S.

Bolivia’s attorney general announced charges on March 9 against former interim president Eduardo Rodriguez for handing over as many as 31 surface-to-air missiles to the United States.

Attorney General Pedro Gareca has charged Rodriguez, president from June 2005 to January, with “handing over to a foreign power” between 19 to 31 Chinese-built surface-to-air missiles.

Also charged were former defense minister Gonzalo Mendez and the former head of Bolivia’s armed forces, Admiral Marco Antonio Justiniano.
The accusation could result in treason charges and send the three men to prison for up to 30 years, Gareca said.

President Evo Morales, who took office on January 22, has long expressed anger over the October missile handover and promised “drastic punishment” for those involved.
Just five days before Morales, a firebrand leftist activist, assumed power, Rodriguez fired the head of the army, General Marcelo Antezana, for his role in the missile affair.

Antezana had earlier issued contradictory statements, first saying that the missiles were obsolete, then that U.S. officials wanted them destroyed to weaken the Morales administration.

Rodriguez said earlier that he authorized the destruction of the missiles after receiving a military report that they had not been properly maintained.
In December, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that U.S. officials helped Bolivia dispose of a small number of portable surface-to-air missiles “that were in deteriorating condition,” but denied reports the La Paz government had not been consulted.

“This was done at the request of the Bolivian government,” he said, adding that it was consistent with an Organization of American States resolution on the matter.