Morales assassins: Bolivia gang "fought in Balkans"

[Jan Klimkowski]

Claims that a Camba Nation flag was found at the scene:

It was shattered before dawn on Thursday when authorities uncovered what they insist was an assassination plot against Morales. At 4:30 a.m., police surrounded the Hotel de las Americas in downtown Santa Cruz, the capital of Bolivia’s anti-Morales east. They’d been tipped about armed occupants in two of the rooms; and when they went to check it out, say government officials, they were met with gunfire. They returned it and killed three of the five men in the rooms, wounding the other two. According to Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, authorities were then led to Santa Cruz’s convention grounds, where they found an arsenal of sharp-shooter rifles, grenades, C-4 explosives and other heavy weaponry. (Is Bolivia’s President Evo Morales one of the most influential people in the world? Vote for the TIME 100.)

More important, Garcia said, they also discovered maps and documents showing that the group the men in the hotel allegedly belonged to had been stalking the caravans of high-ranking government officials and plotting assassination attempts. Vice Minister of the Interior Marcos Farfan said the documents indicated that two members of the group were present when Morales handed out land titles to indigenous Guarani in Santa Cruz province last month — and that they’d supposedly abandoned a scheme to plant a bomb at a recent Morales recent cabinet meeting near Lake Titicaca. More ominously, said Garcia, “we also found documents that speak of future preliminary preparations for an assassination of the President and Vice President.” (Check out a story about Bolivia’s immense and strategic natural resources.)

As he stepped off a plane in Venezuela later in the day, where he was meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez before traveling on to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad on Friday, Morales said unequivocally, “They were going to kill me.” He added, “These are international mercenaries” aligned with Bolivia’s right-wing opposition. Whether or not the men are linked to the conservative opposition — whose members adamantly denied any ties — officials say a flag of the Nacion Camba — a Santa Cruz-based fascist group — was reportedly found among the weapons. According to security officials, one of the three men killed at the hotel was alleged to be a Romanian; one was from Ireland. One of the wounded, say officials, is a former member of the Bolivian military who trained in Croatia. Eastern Bolivia is home to a politically conservative Croat enclave that has been ardently opposed to Morales and his pro-indigenous government since he was elected in 2005.

One link Morales didn’t make Thursday was to the U.S., which he has long insisted is out to destabilize his government because of his left-wing, anti-Washington agenda (including his nationalization of Bolivia’s vast natural gas reserves) as well as his alliance with fellow Latin radicals like Chavez and Cuban President Raul Castro. Last year, in fact, Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador after accusing him of supporting his right-wing foes in Santa Cruz. Last week, he remarked that armed groups in that province were “instruments of the empire,” his code for the U.S. But while he complained on Thursday of “outside interference” in Bolivian affairs, he pulled back from fingering Washington, saying he didn’t yet know who was financing the alleged assassination plots. Said Garcia, “It’s now the work of the [Bolivian] Attorney General to figure out who’s behind these operations.”

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