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Source: Reuters
The Bolivian prosecutor investigating an alleged plot to kill
President Evo Morales said a witness had implicated leading
opposition figures in the conspiracy.
Police raided a hotel last month in the opposition stronghold of
Santa Cruz, killing three people and arresting two suspected of
planning to assassinate the leftist Morales and other prominent
figures.
Marcelo Sosa, the prosecutor leading the investigation, said a
person linked to the group, Ignacio Villa, testified that Santa
Cruz businessman Branko Marinkovic and the province's right-wing
governor had offered financial help.
Marinkovic made Villa an economic offer and Governor Ruben Costas
offered him a house and land, Sosa told reporters.
"The aim of both offers was to (encourage) them to finish what they
had started, a string of attacks," said Sosa, adding that Costas,
Marinkovic and several other businessmen from the wealthy
agricultural province had been summoned to testify.
Marinkovic, a fierce critic of Morales and a prominent political
activist, denied any link to the case.
"We emphatically reject this setup ... The accusations made by
prosecutor Sosa are completely false," he was quoted as saying in
Tuesday's edition of daily newspaper La Prensa.
Political rivals
Morales, a close ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, already
had accused right-wing political rivals of involvement in the plan,
which Costas and others have denied.
Costas has described the alleged plot as a show and the opposition
condemned the police action as an execution.
Sosa said a second witness testified that Marinkovic gave the group
US$200,000 to buy weapons.
In last month's raid, police killed the suspected gang ringleader,
Bolivian Eduardo Rozsa, along with an Irishman and a Romanian.
A Bolivian and a Hungarian were arrested.
The Irish and Hungarian governments have questioned Bolivia's
account that the men had plotted to kill Morales and other public
figures to create a spiral of violence that would destabilize the
energy-rich but poor Andean nation.
Rozsa, a veteran of the 1990s Balkans war, said in an interview
filmed months before his death that he was travelling to Santa Cruz
to defend the eastern province and support its separatist
movement.
Four of Bolivia's nine provinces voted last year for greater
autonomy from the central government, underscoring a sometimes
violent power struggle between the mostly indigenous western
highlands - represented by Morales - and wealthier eastern
regions.
The public prosecutor's office has released photographs of the
suspected mercenaries holding handguns and sniper rifles.
