Morales assassins: Bolivia gang "fought in Balkans"

[Magda Hassan]

The trial of Elod Toaso, a Hungarian citizen accused of terrorism, will start in Bolivia on Monday, Nepszabadsag daily said.
Toaso and Bolivian-Croatian Mario Tadic were arrested in the midst of a police operation to disrupt an alleged plot to assassinate President Evo Morales in Hotel Las Americas of Santa Cruz in April 2009.
According to the Bolivian authorities, Hungarian-Croatian-Bolivian citizen Eduardo Rozsa Flores, Romanian Arpad Magyarosi and Irish Michael Martin Dwyer were shot dead in the operation.
After nearly two years of investigation, prosecutor Marcelo Sosa laid charges against Toaso, Tadic and a further 37 accused, including advocates of Santa Cruz province's pro-autonomy movement, who had allegedly invited and financed foreign terrorists and encouraged them to kill the president and other Bolivian politicians. Fifteen defendants have escaped abroad.
Andres Bartos, the Hungarian honorary consul in La Paz, told the paper that the trial would be held in Cochabamba, 400 km from the capital. The consul said he did not plan to travel there for the trial. It is sufficient for the honorary consul to follow the trial for the time being, the Hungarian foreign affairs spokesperson told Nepszabadsag.
http://www.politics.hu/20110411/hungaria...in-bolivia

[Magda Hassan]

Eduardo Rozsa Flores in Dying for the truth (John Sweney)

Full movie here.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Eduardo Rosza Flores in Dying for the truth (John Sweney)

Magda - great find.

Eduardo Rosza Flores' performance reminds me of Garrison in JFK:

"One may smile, and smile and be a villain."
Goddamn it! We've got one of them.

For background on the clip above, Rosza Flores' "International Brigade" and the murder of journalists, see earlier in this thread, eg page 3:

In Rozsa Flores' own words (see my post #14 above):

Eduardo Rozsa Flores is a journalist who became a soldier. He was born in Bolivia from a Hungarian father and a Spanish mother. He arrived to the South Slav war as the Spanish-language correspondent of the BBC; then he decided to join the Croatian side as a volunteer fighter.

This suggests to me that he was a freelance stringer who managed to get accredited by the BBC at the beginning of the 1990s Balkan Wars.

Other posts in this thread (eg #22) suggest that the Croatian International Brigade, which he led, was not a conventional fighting unit. It was rather a Tudjman-sanctioned dirty tricks unit. Clearly, Rozsa Flores didn't want his funders to become known (intriguingly Opus Dei is mentioned):

handing out the orders to the British mercenaries in Osijek is a sinister young Spanish gentleman by the name of Eduardo Flores, a man whose name crops up with ever increasing frequency in investigations of the deaths of British photographer Paul Jenks and Swiss reporter Christian Wurtenberg in January ... around the time the BBC team filmed the "Dogs of War".

In fact, Searchlight can exclusively reveal for the first time, information about Flores' well travelled background.

Only 32 years old and claiming to be without military experience (despite sporting para wings), Jorge Eduardo Rosza Flores commands the so-called International Brigade (PIV) based in Osijek.

To get there has been a long journey involving several political mutations and numerous contacts with the twilight world of armies, secret services and quasi fascist religious organisations.

Born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to spanish catholic mother and Hungarian Jewish father, Flores spent his formative years in Budapest, where in his teens he was an active member of the communist youth movement.

In fact, he is not without military experience, having done his military service in the Hungarian army as a border guard at Budapest airport, where he reportedly met the notorious international terrorist "Carlos".

In 1988-89 Flores' career took a new direction when he started to work with the Barcelona paper La Vanguardia as an assistent to Ricardo Estarriol, the paper's East European correspondant and an active member of the secretive rightist Catholic organisation Opus Dei.

Both men made regular trips to Vienna to visit the Opus Dei offices there and Flores mantained close contact with this historically pro-fascist Catholic organisation.

Before being assigned by La vangaurdia to Croatia, where he was to jettison his laptop computer in favor of a rifle, Flores was covering events in Hungary, Albania and Slovenia, the province in which German government insired seperatists had already begun to drive the first stakes into the hearts of Yugoslavia. Arriving in Croatia in late August 1991, Flores immediately announced that he had enlisted in the so-called Croatian National Guard and was posted to the village of Lazlovo, close to the Serbian border and populated by ethnic Hungarians.

Within weeks of his arrival, Flored had made an impact and had found allied in the shape of American Croatian Johnny "Bob" Kosic and one "Jura" a Hungarian from the village. Between them, on 3 October, they cooked up the idea of an international brigade, which gained instant recognition from Franjo Tudjman's Croatian authorities.

The conduit for the promp legalisation of the new force was Branimir Glavas, the head of the local militia in Osijek, which was to later become the base for Flores unit.

Foreigners began to flood in as recruits. Among them were the top Portugeuse sniper Alejandro Cunan Fernandez and Alejandro Hernandez Mora, a Spanish mercenary and an explosives and sabatoge expert. Also among the new arrivals was Stephan Hannock, the welshmen known as "Frenchie" because his claimed background in the French Foreign Legion.

Other recruits, who brought the brgade's strength to around 100, included a French group sent by the fascist Front National.

Other FN members found ther way into the ranks of the more explicitly fascist Black Legion, which is attached to the 15,000 strong Armed Croatian Forces (HOS) militias and based at Vukovar, about 22 miles from Osijek.

Journalists from across Europe have wanted to lift the lid on the freelance killers operating in Croatia. For Christian Wurtenberg and Paul Jenks, this curiosity was to prove fatal.

Wurtenberg working for a Swiss news agency, decided to investigate alleged links between Flores and trafficking in weapons and drugs by joining the International Brigade, despite oppostion from his editors.

In addition, he hoped to uncover evidence of right-wing extremists amongst the mercenaries who decorate their rooms with swastikas and to establish precisely who was paying them.

After serving with Flores' outfit for a few weeks. Wurtenberg secretly told Spanish television reporter Julio Cesar Alonso that very soon he would leave the brigade and return to Switzerland.

Days later, on 4 January, Alonso and a Porteguese televeision reporter, Joso Pinto Amaral, were taken from Zagreb's Hotel Intercontinental to the headquarters of the Croatian secret police. They were later interrogated.

After the questioning, Flored told the two journalists there was a mole in the brigade and that the mole was Swiss and "had to be got rid of", adding that his forces would not kill him but that they would be killed by Serbians in an ambush.

The journalists tried to warn Wurtenberg but found he had already been placed under arrest. Desperate, they travelled to Osijek only to be met by Flores who told them with a grin "By the way, we've got a loss - Christian. The Swiss problem has been sorted out."

The "sorting out" was brutal. According to teh autopsy at the Osijek hospital, Christian Wurtenberg "was killed on 6 January 1992 as a result of mechanical action with a blunt weapon and later strangulation with hands and rope".

Flores claimed later that Wurtenberg was murdered by "Chetniks" (Serbs) but in fact strangling is almost unknown among them. Prisoners simply have their throats cut.

Wurtenberg's computer went missing and his diary was returned to his family with vital pages ripped out, while the Croatian media launched a cover up of the cause of his death. When it leaked out some days later, alarm spread among the foreign journalists working in Zagreb.

On 13 January, Paul Jenks and a colleaugue Hassan Amini, visited the International brigade to ask questions about what had happened to Wurtenberg. The man they met was Stephen "Frenchie" Hannock who, in response to Jenk's persistent questions said "who knows ... who cares. I dont, for one and I know a lot more than you."

Flores was due to arrive so "Frenchie" asked the 2 photographers to leave. Nevertheless, Flores learned of thier presence and later went to the Osijek press centre to give them "his version" of the events surrounding Wurtenberg's murder.

He never met them, but four days later Paul Jenks was shot through the head at the front line in Briest, near Osijek. Officially he was killed by a Serbian sniper hidden some 900 metres away in the Serbian held village of Tenski-Antunovac, but the positions of Flores' International Brigade were much closer. The indications are that the range was far shorter than 900 metres and there are suggestions that the bullet did not enter his heead from the direction of the sniper.

A mere two days later after Jenks killing, Flores was on the telephone again to give "his version", telling Julio Alonso in Spain: "It is not very convenient being a journalist." Strong suspicions now exist about the roles of both the sinister Flores and "Frenchie" in the deaths of the two journalists.

Like the dirty war being fought by Flores and other rightist killer gangs in Croatia, the truth about the murder of Wurtenber and Jenks has been covered up.

What they discovered about the sources of funds, the role of Opus Dei, the involvement of extreme rightists and the weapons and drugs rackets may never be known. Flores and "Frenchie" have ensured that.

[Jan Klimkowski]

What have we here?

A wikileaked US Embassy cable from La Paz, dated 2009-05-06 15:17, with plenty of material about the case for the Santa Cruz elites, and the likes of Croatian-Bolivian Branko Marinkovic, being the funders of Rozsa Flores' false flag attacks.

The case is that the atrocities were designed to be blamed on Morales' government and create chaos and anarchy.

VZCZCXYZ0000
OO RUEHWEB

DE RUEHLP #0659/01 1261517
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
O 061517Z MAY 09
FM AMEMBASSY LA PAZ
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0685
INFO RUEHAC/AMEMBASSY ASUNCION IMMEDIATE 8991
RUEHBO/AMEMBASSY BOGOTA IMMEDIATE 6373
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA IMMEDIATE 0347
RUEHBM/AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST IMMEDIATE 0045
RUEHUP/AMEMBASSY BUDAPEST IMMEDIATE 0039
RUEHBU/AMEMBASSY BUENOS AIRES IMMEDIATE 7556
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS IMMEDIATE 4603
RUEHDL/AMEMBASSY DUBLIN IMMEDIATE 0027
RUEHPE/AMEMBASSY LIMA IMMEDIATE 4938
RUEHMN/AMEMBASSY MONTEVIDEO IMMEDIATE 6273
RUEHQT/AMEMBASSY QUITO IMMEDIATE 7221
RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO IMMEDIATE 1985
RUEHRI/AMCONSUL RIO DE JANEIRO IMMEDIATE 1069
RUEHSO/AMCONSUL SAO PAULO IMMEDIATE 2385
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE
RHMFISS/HQ USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL IMMEDIATE
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE

S E C R E T LA PAZ 000659

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/05/2049
TAGS: PREL PTER PGOV KJUS PHUM ASEC BL
SUBJECT: GOB IMPLICATES SANTA CRUZ LEADERS IN "TERRORISM"
PLOT

REF: LA PAZ 635 AND PREVIOUS

Classified By: American Presence Post Officer Debra Hevia for reason 1.
4 b and d.

¶1. (S) Summary: The government prosecutor has implicated a
dozen top Santa Cruz leaders in supporting a "terrorist cell"
aiming to divide the country. A former public defender for
one of the Hungarian defendants told us the government had
informants within the group and a great deal of evidence to
support its claims. Meanwhile, Santa Cruz leaders claim the
government's investigation is a political show, timed to
undermine the one-year anniversary of the autonomy vote and
to weaken the democratic opposition before December national
elections. The public defender expressed concerns about
judicial irregularities and human rights abuses in the case,
and claims the government has enough evidence that it should
be proceeding with confidence and in conformity with the law.
The irregularities are inspiring conspiracy theories that
the government has something to hide, and that some top
government officials may have been deeply involved in the
group's activities. We believe it will be many months before
the whole truth is known in this case, if ever. End summary.


Government Links Leading Crucenos to Terrorist Cell
--------------------------------------------- ------
¶2. (U) On May 4, as Santa Cruz leaders were making rousing
public speeches to mark the one-year anniversary of the vote
approving the department's autonomy statute, the government
prosecutor in charge of the investigation of the "terrorist"
cell uncovered in April accused many of those same Cruceno
leaders of supporting the terrorists' activities. In a press
conference, prosecutor Marcelo Sosa said evidence collected
from the testimony of the arrested terrorist suspects and
confiscated materials indicated that the group had the
support of:
--Prefect (Governor) Ruben Costas;
--Former Civic Committee President Branko Marinkovic;
--President of the Private Business Association Pedro Yohvio;
--Former President of the Ranchers' Association and now Civic
Committee Vice President Guido Nayar;
--President of the Agricultural Chamber Mauricio Roca;
--Civic Committee General Director Lorgio Balcazar;
--Former Civic Committee General Director Mario Bruno;
--Vice-President of Blooming Soccer Team Carlos Alberto
Guillen;
--Director for International Cooperation at the Prefecture
Francisco Cirbian;
--Retired Army General Lucio Anez,
and others.

¶3. (U) The Santa Cruz leadership responded with outrage and
indignation, saying the Morales Administration was on a witch
hunt, that the entire "terrorist cell" story was a set-up,
and that it was an obvious attempt by the government to
squash the democratic opposition before December 2009
presidential elections. Marinkovic declared, "It is no
surprise at all that the government would choose the one-year
anniversary of our autonomy vote to launch these false
accusations against us." Current Civic Committee President
Luis Nunez called for the formation of an "Interinstitutional
Commission" for all Santa Cruz organizations to band together
in mutual defense. He challenged the government to "end the
political show, and focus instead on finding the facts,
following proper legal procedures, and maintaining the
principle of innocent until proven guilty."

¶4. (U) Sosa told the press that an individual named Luis
Hurtado paid the hotel bills for the group. He said the
government investigation revealed that there were five major
financiers behind the "terrorist" organization, and

identified three of them:
--Alejandro MELGAR Pereira, a commercial arbitration lawyer
associated with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CAINCO);
--Juan Alberto KUDELKA Zalles, director of marketing of the
seed oil company owned by the Marinkovic family; and
--Hugo Antonio MELGAR Acha, Bolivian Director of the
U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Foundation, and a close embassy
contact on human rights issues.

¶5. (U) The New York-based HRF spokeswoman told press that
"Human Rights Foundation in Bolivia has carried out
extraordinary work denouncing human rights abuses in that
country, and unfortunately the response of Morales comes in
the form of insults and unfounded accusations. Even more
worrisome is that the escalation of attacks by the Morales
administration is putting at risk particularly the rights of
Bolivians who live in the four opposition departments. We
have carried out an internal review and have found no
evidence that Mr. Acha is linked to the group that the
government claims is carrying out separatist activities."

Public Defender: So Much Pressure, So Much Evidence
--------------------------------------------- ------
¶6. (S) American Presence Post Officer met May 5 with the
former public defender assigned to alleged terrorist Mario
Tadic, one of the two Hungarian citizens arrested in the
April 15 raid on the Hotel Las Americas in Santa Cruz
(reftel). The defender had just recused herself from the
case, saying she couldn't function in the face of so many
judicial irregularities and so much government pressure, with
no support from her institution. Based on her discussions
with her former client and her review of all the government
evidence, she believes that the Santa Cruz leaders named by
the government are most likely linked with the group, which
she called "mercenaries" not "terrorists." She said they did
not seem to be acting out of any particular conviction, but
Tadic admitted they had been stockpiling weapons and carrying
out military training on rural properties outside the city of
Santa Cruz. She confirmed they were responsible for placing
the explosive device in front of the Cardinal's house on
April 14. Tadic testified that the next target was going to
be Prefect Ruben Costas' residence, and that Rozsa had
advised Costas to strengthen his security gate to minimize
the damage. The intent in targetting the Cardinal and the
Prefect was to make it look like MAS-supporters were carrying
out the attacks.

¶7. (S) The defense attorney said that the two members of the
"Santa Cruz Youth Union" arrested last week for allegedly
providing weapons to the "terrorists" were actually
government informants (Juan Gueder and Alejandro Mendoza).
Apparently they were originally contracted by the group to
provide weapons, but they charged the group much more than
the weapons were worth. This caused a "conflict" (ring
leader Eduardo Rozsa Flores reportedly had a violent temper),
and after the altercation the two went to the government to
inform on Rozsa and his group. They are currently under
house arrest in La Paz, and very indignant about the rough
way they were treated during their arrests, considering that
they were working for the government after their fallout with
the group. Another former Youth Union member, Ignacio Villa
Vargas, is being treated as a "key witness" and is in hiding
under government protection in La Paz. Santa Cruz leaders
consider him a "bought" voice for the government, given his
long criminal record.

¶8. (S) The defender said the second arrested Hungarian, Elod
Toaso, was actually Rozsa's lover. He was badly beaten
during the arrest, but not during any interrogations. He now
has a private lawyer, who is planning to use the defense that
Toaso was merely Rozsa's domestic partner, and not a member
of the "terrorist cell." The lawyer also said in a public

statement that his client has information about the
involvement of high-level government officials, which he will
reveal soon.

Real Human Rights Abuses
------------------------
¶9. (S) The Hungarian, Irish, and Romanian government are
demanding an explanation for why Bolivian police shot three
men dead in their beds in the middle of the night, and a
Spanish expert in terrorism investigations has arrived in
Bolivia. The public defender admitted that the
highly-trained SWAT team could have easily arrested them in
that condition in the middle of the night. There are many
conspiracy theories that the central government not only knew
about the activities of the group, but got directly involved
at some point to futher incriminate Santa Cruz leaders. For
example, the informers told the police the identity and
location of a Paraguayan arms dealer (Alcides) that was one
of the group's suppliers, but the government chose not to
arrest or question him. The defender cannot understand why.
This is but one of the irregularities. Another problem is
that the government is publicly releasing testimony by its
"key witness" Villa Vargas, but defense attorneys have never
seen him, have no ability to question him due to his supposed
"terminal diabetes," and the government has never presented
evidence from a medical authority that he is too ill to
testify in public.

¶10. (S) In general, the defense attorney was appalled and
offended by the way the government is handling the case.
Based on what she has been shown, she said they have much
evidence and should be acting in full confidence. There is
no need to be making such a political show and violating
procedural law, and certainly no need to so blatantly abuse
the rights of the defendants, she stated. For example, she
was summoned to a hearing without receiving a copy of the
evidence the prosecutor was to present, which legally she
should have been given 48 hours before the hearing. She
filed a motion to postpone the hearing, and the new time was
set for 2:30 a.m. She said Tadic is being kept in solitary
confinement with no electricity, so he is in the semi-dark
all day long and total dark at night. He has a brother in
Chile who is willing to help him, but the prison warden will
not allow him contact with his brother. He has no clothes,
nothing for his personal hygiene, and since he was arrested
in the middle of the night, not even his eyeglasses, so he
cannot read anything. The defense attorney filed a complaint
with the social worker of the prison, asked the government to
provide him with his personal effects from Santa Cruz such as
clothing and eyeglasses, and also asked the Red Cross to
provide some humanitarian assistance, but no one has provided
any relief for Tadic and he languishes in very poor
conditions. In addition, she said she could not assume a
proper defense given the procedural irregularities and the
government pressure surrounding the case, and the frustration
and stress caused her to recuse herself. She was replaced by
a public defender who is "100 percent MAS-ista" and she is
confident Tadic will continue to be treated poorly and
receive the maximum sentence.

Comment:
---------
¶11. © There are many unanswered questions in the
government's investigation, and the Crucenos vehemently deny
the accusations. We expect the saga to drag on for many
months. Perhaps we will never know the full truth. However,
we can take small comfort in the fact that the public
defender did not report seeing the U.S. Embassy on any list
of potential suspects.

URS

[Jan Klimkowski]

Selected details from the US Embassy cable.

These are the two basic hypotheses being proposed.

The government prosecutor has implicated a
dozen top Santa Cruz leaders in supporting a "terrorist cell"
aiming to divide the country. A former public defender for
one of the Hungarian defendants told us the government had
informants within the group and a great deal of evidence to
support its claims. Meanwhile, Santa Cruz leaders claim the
government's investigation is a political show, timed to
undermine the one-year anniversary of the autonomy vote and
to weaken the democratic opposition before December national
elections.

The prosecutor's case places Marinkovic elements and US intelligence cutouts at the heart of the plot.

In a press
conference, prosecutor Marcelo Sosa said evidence collected
from the testimony of the arrested terrorist suspects and
confiscated materials indicated that the group had the
support of:
--Prefect (Governor) Ruben Costas;
--Former Civic Committee President Branko Marinkovic;
--President of the Private Business Association Pedro Yohvio;
--Former President of the Ranchers' Association and now Civic
Committee Vice President Guido Nayar;
--President of the Agricultural Chamber Mauricio Roca;
--Civic Committee General Director Lorgio Balcazar;
--Former Civic Committee General Director Mario Bruno;
--Vice-President of Blooming Soccer Team Carlos Alberto
Guillen;
--Director for International Cooperation at the Prefecture
Francisco Cirbian;
--Retired Army General Lucio Anez,
and others.

(snip)

Sosa told the press that an individual named Luis
Hurtado paid the hotel bills for the group. He said the
government investigation revealed that there were five major
financiers behind the "terrorist" organization, and

identified three of them:
--Alejandro MELGAR Pereira, a commercial arbitration lawyer
associated with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (CAINCO);
--Juan Alberto KUDELKA Zalles, director of marketing of the
seed oil company owned by the Marinkovic family; and
--Hugo Antonio MELGAR Acha, Bolivian Director of the
U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Foundation, and a close embassy
contact on human rights issues.

The next excerpt is fascinating. It suggests that the case made in this thread that Rozsa Flores' group were mercenaries, hired to commit false flag attacks - eg an attack on the anti-Morales Cardinal and even one of their own facilitators, Prefect Ruben Costas' residence, with Costas' prior knowledge and complicity - is strong.

American Presence Post Officer met May 5 with the
former public defender assigned to alleged terrorist Mario
Tadic, one of the two Hungarian citizens arrested in the
April 15 raid on the Hotel Las Americas in Santa Cruz
(reftel). The defender had just recused herself from the
case, saying she couldn't function in the face of so many
judicial irregularities and so much government pressure, with
no support from her institution. Based on her discussions
with her former client and her review of all the government
evidence, she believes that the Santa Cruz leaders named by
the government are most likely linked with the group, which
she called "mercenaries" not "terrorists." She said they did
not seem to be acting out of any particular conviction, but
Tadic admitted they had been stockpiling weapons and carrying
out military training on rural properties outside the city of
Santa Cruz. She confirmed they were responsible for placing
the explosive device in front of the Cardinal's house on
April 14. Tadic testified that the next target was going to
be Prefect Ruben Costas' residence, and that Rozsa had
advised Costas to strengthen his security gate to minimize
the damage. The intent in targetting the Cardinal and the
Prefect was to make it look like MAS-supporters were carrying
out the attacks.

There are counter allegations of Bolivian government complicity and mistreatment of the prisoners.

My own suspicion is that the Morales' Secret Service knew about the activities of Rozsa Flores' gang soon after their arrival in Bolivia. I also suspect that there may have been some facilitation of their efforts to buy arms, etc, to ensure that their plot grew sufficiently advanced to amount to the attempt to commit atrocities to create the ground for an armed insurrection.

Once Rozsa Flores' plans neared fruition, Morales' Secret Service acted with lethal force, and did what JFK's Secret Service notoriously failed to do.

The cable ends, rather hysterically:

Perhaps we will never know the full truth. However, we can take small comfort in the fact that the public
defender did not report seeing the U.S. Embassy on any list of potential suspects.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The trial of Elod Toaso, a Hungarian citizen accused of terrorism, will start in Bolivia on Monday, Nepszabadsag daily said.
Toaso and Bolivian-Croatian Mario Tadic were arrested in the midst of a police operation to disrupt an alleged plot to assassinate President Evo Morales in Hotel Las Americas of Santa Cruz in April 2009.
According to the Bolivian authorities, Hungarian-Croatian-Bolivian citizen Eduardo Rozsa Flores, Romanian Arpad Magyarosi and Irish Michael Martin Dwyer were shot dead in the operation.
After nearly two years of investigation, prosecutor Marcelo Sosa laid charges against Toaso, Tadic and a further 37 accused, including advocates of Santa Cruz province's pro-autonomy movement, who had allegedly invited and financed foreign terrorists and encouraged them to kill the president and other Bolivian politicians. Fifteen defendants have escaped abroad.
Andres Bartos, the Hungarian honorary consul in La Paz, told the paper that the trial would be held in Cochabamba, 400 km from the capital. The consul said he did not plan to travel there for the trial. It is sufficient for the honorary consul to follow the trial for the time being, the Hungarian foreign affairs spokesperson told Nepszabadsag.
http://www.politics.hu/20110411/hungaria...in-bolivia

According to the US Embassy wikileaked cable, Elod Toaso was Rozsa Flores' "lover":

The defender said the second arrested Hungarian, Elod
Toaso, was actually Rozsa's lover. He was badly beaten
during the arrest, but not during any interrogations. He now
has a private lawyer, who is planning to use the defense that
Toaso was merely Rozsa's domestic partner, and not a member
of the "terrorist cell." The lawyer also said in a public
statement that his client has information about the
involvement of high-level government officials, which he will
reveal soon.

[Magda Hassan]

Wikileaks: CIA role in alleged plot to assassinate Evo Morales

Posted by Brenda Norrell - September 16, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Article and photo by Brenda Norrell
Photo: President Evo Morales at the Protecting Mother Earth Gathering in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2010. Photo by Brenda Norrell

An unredacted US diplomatic cable describes Bolivia's statements describing a CIA connection in an alleged plot to assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales. The unredacted version of this cable was released on Sept. 8 and among numerous cables which describe US spying on both President Morales and the internal affairs of the Bolivian government.

The confidential US cable describes a Bolivian prosecutor's statements about the alleged plot to assassinate President Morales in 2009. As usual, the US Embassy evaluates how the allegations of CIA involvement are playing out in the media.

The cable titled "Bolivian prosecutor ties terror case to CIA," describes the alleged perpetrator Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a Bolivian-Hungarian mercenary, journalist, actor, and secret agent. Rozsa was born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. His wartime nickname in the Croatian War of Independence was Chico and the title of a feature film about him. Rózsa was killed April 16, 2009, by Bolivian police during a raid in the Las Americas hotel in Santa Cruz, along with two other people, from Hungary and Ireland.

The cable was written by John S. Creamer, Charge D' Affaires at the US Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, on Feb. 9, 2010. Creamer states in the cable that his Internet search for the alleged CIA agent Belovays from the US, reveals that Belovays also since died.

"The Bolivian prosecutor investigating a 2009 alleged domestic terrorism plot claims that the perpetrators' leader, Eduardo Rozsa, had been in regular contact with a former CIA employee and kept him informed of the group's activities in Bolivia. The prosecutor's assertion is the first specific GOB (Government of Bolivia) allegation of U.S. involvement in the Rozsa affair, in which the Bolivian government maintains it thwarted an attempt to set up a separatist military force, as well as a conspiracy to assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales. Although the prosecutor stopped short of accusing the CIA of backing Rozsa's mercenary group, we can expect that GOB officials will make that claim, regardless of the evidence," states the summary of the cable.

The body of the cable follows:
"Marcelo Soza, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the April 2009 Rozsa case, announced February 5 that a review of Rozsa's computer hard drive had uncovered evidence of email communication between Rozsa and an alleged ex-CIA employee (a U.S. citizen named Belovays). According to Soza, Belovays had been active in the Balkans wars, where he supposedly met Rozsa and became his mentor. An internet search on Belovays suggested that he has since died, Soza reported (Rozsa and two others were killed in a police raid; another two suspects are in custody). Soza claimed that Rozsa's computer files show that Rozsa was in constant contact with Belovays -- who, Soza said, is assumed to have been in Bolivia at some point -- and kept him informed of his group's activities and plans.
3.(SBU) Soza did not provide any details of the alleged exchanges between Rozsa and Belovays, nor characterized Belovays's role beyond asserting that the alleged former agent had been aware of Rozsa's conspiracy. The Bolivian press has so far reported the story straight, sticking strictly to Soza's account but featuring headlines such as, Soza Says CIA Knew Rozsa's Plans" and Rozsa Informed CIA Agent of Work.'
4.© Comment: Soza's initial claims may be limited in scope, but we expect that Bolivian government officials will not feel themselves similarly bound by actual evidence. For nearly a year, the GOB has maintained that Rozsa and his group represented a grave threat and that they were backed by enemies of President Morales (including prominent opposition and Santa Cruz civic leaders, who are increasingly the target of Soza's investigation). The Bolivian government is almost certain to seize upon this opportunity to link the U.S. empire' to the alleged conspiracy and substantiate Morales's wildest claims about American skullduggery."

Creamer

Cable: http://wikileaks.org/cable/2010/02/10LAPAZ35.html

[Bernice Moore]

Wikileaks: CIA role in alleged plot to assassinate Evo Morales

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/noteboo...vo-morales

[Jan Klimkowski]

The wikileaked cable refers to the link to CIA asset Scorpion-B, which was discussed earlier in this thread:

The body of the cable follows:
"Marcelo Soza, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the April 2009 Rozsa case, announced February 5 that a review of Rozsa's computer hard drive had uncovered evidence of email communication between Rozsa and an alleged ex-CIA employee (a U.S. citizen named Belovays). According to Soza, Belovays had been active in the Balkans wars, where he supposedly met Rozsa and became his mentor. An internet search on Belovays suggested that he has since died, Soza reported (Rozsa and two others were killed in a police raid; another two suspects are in custody). Soza claimed that Rozsa's computer files show that Rozsa was in constant contact with Belovays -- who, Soza said, is assumed to have been in Bolivia at some point -- and kept him informed of his group's activities and plans.
3.(SBU) Soza did not provide any details of the alleged exchanges between Rozsa and Belovays, nor characterized Belovays's role beyond asserting that the alleged former agent had been aware of Rozsa's conspiracy. The Bolivian press has so far reported the story straight, sticking strictly to Soza's account but featuring headlines such as, Soza Says CIA Knew Rozsa's Plans" and Rozsa Informed CIA Agent of Work.'
4.© Comment: Soza's initial claims may be limited in scope, but we expect that Bolivian government officials will not feel themselves similarly bound by actual evidence. For nearly a year, the GOB has maintained that Rozsa and his group represented a grave threat and that they were backed by enemies of President Morales (including prominent opposition and Santa Cruz civic leaders, who are increasingly the target of Soza's investigation). The Bolivian government is almost certain to seize upon this opportunity to link the U.S. empire' to the alleged conspiracy and substantiate Morales's wildest claims about American skullduggery."

Belovai/Scorpion-B termed himself "Hungary's first NATO soldier".

For me, that translates that as Hungary's first Gladio operative, with all that implies.
# Here's some material from post #239:

Ex-spy linked to mercenary case
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Eduardo Rozsa Flores, the ethnic Hungarian mercenary who was shot dead by a commando unit in Santa Cruz in April 2009, may have received financial support from an ex-CIA liaison officer, according to the Bolivian Prosecutor's Office. The accusation will be rather difficult to prove, however, as the CIA man in question, Istvan Belovai, passed away last November.

Hungarian-Bolivian-Croatian citizen Flores and two acquaintances were shot dead in suspicious circumstances after local police allegedly tried to apprehend them for conspiring to murder Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Belovai, who was one of the most prominent Hungarian spies, received a life sentence in 1985 for sending NATO documents to Russia with US approval and uncovering a spy ring within the military alliance. He received a partial pardon after the fall of communism, but fled to the US in fear of his life. He died in Colorado aged 71 in November.

According to Bolivian prosecutor Marcelo Sosa, Flores met Belovai - codename Scorpion B in the Balkans and later received technical and financial support from him for terrorist activities in the South American country.

Apparently the cooperation was revealed by examining computers seized by Bolivian police after the death of Rozsa-Flores. Investigators found several letters on one of the machines as well as documents suggesting the involvement in the conspiracy of at least ten other people, who will be questioned soon, Sosa told reporters.

Flores' acquaintances in Bolivia told the news portal hirszerzo.hu that the Hungarian had corresponded with Belovai, but said it was impossible that Flores had been working with the CIA. "Even if that were the case, he would not have used an agent who had been inactive for the last 25 years", they said.

http://www.budapesttimes.hu/index.php?op...&Itemid=26

This Belovai/Scorpion-B revelation is intriguing at many levels.

Firstly, the ethnic Hungarian Belovai/Scorpion-B was a double, perhaps triple, agent. And so important that he received sanctuary in Colorado, and even died a seemingly natural death in the good ole US of A.

Secondly, Belovai/Scorpion-B was clearly a chameleon, able to pass in Soviet circles as one of theirs. Just like the young Eduardo Rozsa Flores studying at the elite Dzerzhinsky Academy.

In exile Belovai campaigned to be given a full pardon and to be restored to his former military rank, arguing that he had acted as he did to save Hungary as well as the West from a catastrophic nuclear war.

"I was never a traitor. I was Hungary's first Nato soldier," he claimed. But even 20 years after the end of Communist rule, no Hungarian political party has been prepared to rehabilitate him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituari...lovai.html

Men with the deep political backgrounds and sponsorships of Belovai/Scorpion-B and Eduardo Rozsa Flores do not have casual conversations about the weather.

[Magda Hassan]

Destabilizing Arsenals Concealed in US Embassies

By Nil NIKANDROV | Strategic Culture Foundation | 02.04.2012

Over the past years, it has been happening with frightening regularity that U.S. diplomats and CIA agents were caught pulling off operations involving illicit weapons supply in Latin America. The inescapable impression is that the U.S. Department of State has irreversibly learned to regard the Vienna Convention and various national legislation as rules which it has unlimited freedom to overstep.
Pressing for unchallenged hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, Washington keeps the populist regimes in Latin America under permanent pressure. Outwardly, the U.S. Administration pledges not to resort to military force to displace the ALBA governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, or Cuba, but in reality Washington's efforts to undermine them are a constant background of the continent's political picture. The activity began under president G. Bush and shows no signs of subsiding under president Obama. Supposedly, plans are being devised in the White House that a series of color revolutions will erupt across Latin America in 2013-2014 and derail the continent's advancement towards tighter integration in security and other spheres. As the fresh experience of Libya showed with utmost clarity, Washington's new brand of color revolutions will in contrast to the former coups which used to be accompanied with outpourings of pacifist rhetoric involve ferocious fighting and massive fatalities figures.
The above should explain why U.S. embassies in Latin America increasingly often become epicenters of political scandals related to illicit weapons supplies. In a recent incident in Bolivia, the country's mobile patrol service (Umopar) intercepted in Trinidad, the capital of the department of Beni, a vehicle owned by the U.S. diplomatic mission and driven by two Bolivian nationals chief of U.S. Embassy security Maj. Costas and Sgt. Garcia, a driver which was found to be heading for the capital of Santa Cruz province with three shotguns, a 38-caliber revolver, and a load of ammunition. Bolivian Interior Minister Carlos Romero announced shortly thereafter that the U.S. embassy had not requested a permit for transporting weapons and, therefore, acted illegally and put Bolivia's National Security in jeopardy. It remained unknown who was going to secretly receive the weapons seized in the district located hundreds of kilometers away from La Paz.
The Bolivian administration has serious reasons to be on the alert slightly over a year ago, Ecuador's police which had been armed, funded, and otherwise courted by the U.S. embassy, used to launch missions directed by U.S. advisers and gradually evolved to think of the national administration's control as purely nominal organized a mutiny and, as the plot unraveled, president Rafael Correa narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. An investigation that followed when law and order were restored in Ecuador failed to clarify the origin of the sniper rifles used to fire on the president, which likely means that the CIA professionals left no trace of their involvement in the coup.
The US embassy in La Paz reacted to the Trinidad incident by releasing a statement to the effect that the Beni police had actually been notified about the supply of firearms to Santa Cruz and that the plan had been to pass them to Bolivian nationals employed as guards by US institutions. Minister Romero was as a result forced to reiterate that no license had been issued on the occasion and said that a probe would be opened into how the firearms and ammunition had crossed the Bolivian border.
For anyone familiar with the scope of the activity of the US intelligence community in Bolivia, the context of minister Romero's invectives is not hard to grasp. A shocking episode took place in Santa Cruz, a city with a reputation of a hotbed of separatism, in April, 2009 back then, Bolivian special forces raided the Las Americas hotel and mowed down a group of terrorists who had arrived to the country from Western Europe with the goals of fueling armed resistance to the populist regime and assassinating president Evo Morales. It transpired that the uninvited visitors had a record of fighting against the Serbs in the Balkan region, where the bunch of militants had formed strong links with Western intelligence services. The Bolivian counter-espionage agency's investigation into various aspects of the case of the group's leader Eduardo Rózsa-Flores particularly the part of the probe meant to shed light on the channels through which firearms, grenades, explosives and ammunition had been smuggled into the country is still underway. In a rather predictable development, a number of individuals who had assisted Rózsa-Flores, including Human Rights Foundation representative Hugo Acha (a.k.a Superman) fled to the U.S. The Bolivian security service got a hold of e-mail exchanges between Rózsa-Flores and Belovays, a U.S. national and, reportedly, a career CIA officer whose profile also features a stay in the Balkans.
The U.S. van with firearms on board ended up in the hands of the Bolivian police a month after the U.S. and Bolivian administrations penned a deal normalizing the diplomatic relations between the two countries and exchanged ambassadors. The lesson that Morales has to relearn under the circumstances is that shifts in diplomacy notwithstanding the staff of the U.S. embassy in Bolivia has no intention to stop playing its totally unfair game.
There's hardly a country in Latin America where U.S. agents have not been spotted trafficking firearms. A U.S. national was taken in custody last April in the proximity of the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires for carrying three rifles, two of them with telescopic sights, in a vehicle with a diplomatic license plate. The U.S. embassy somehow explained away the incident with a reference to an unspecified emergency (no doubt, getting away with a similar offense so easily would have been out of question in the U.S.), and the perpetrator, a U.S. embassy contractor, in his own description, immediately hopped on a plane to the U.S. Argentina's police were keenly interested in the man's "hunting" trips to the regions of the country bordering Bolivia and Chile, considering that Argentinian laws strictly prohibit the conduct of intelligence operations, including those against drug trafficking, by foreign agents.
Speaking of Argentina, the loudest story played out about a year ago when boxes containing undeclared firearms, reconnaissance equipment, and narcotic substances were discovered aboard a U.S. Air Force Boeing in the Ezeiza airport. The U.S. mischief was impossible to deny, but, as in the majority of cases, the U.S. easily solved the problem, this time by asserting that all of the above was necessary to train Argentinian police.
It is a recurrent theme in the media that sizable arsenals are stored in U.S. embassies across Latin America. These days, given that the ostensibly anti-terror war has been raging globally for over a decade, nobody is taken aback when this type of information surfaces. The perceived risks are pervasive, be it Mexico, Central America, Columbia, Brazil, or even Uruguay, and alarmist forecasts evidently proliferate. That must be the reason why, in just about every Latin American country, the U.S. embassies increasingly resemble military bases, with reinforced concrete walls, tiny windows, and underground shelters.
https://alethonews.wordpress.com/tag/edu...sa-flores/