Former President Jaime Paz Zamora has been subpoenaed to appear before investigators looking into charges that an erstwhile subordinate of the ex-head of state was in league with drug traffickers, a prosecutor told EFE on Thursday.
Ramiro Lopez said the probe concerns Rolando Arostegui, who was prefect of the eastern province of Santa Cruz during Paz Zamora’s 1989-1993 administration, and that the former president himself is not a target of the investigation.
The prosecutor described the scrutiny of Arostegui as a new phase in the so-called “narco links” case, which dates from the early 1990s and centered on ties between drug traffickers and members of Paz Zamora’s Movement of the Revolutionary Left, or MIR, which is actually a social-democratic party.
Oscar Eid, regarded as Paz Zamora’s right-hand man, spent four years in prison as a result of that probe, though he returned to a senior post in the MIR after completing his sentence.
Also set to testify in the investigation of Arostegui is former Interior Minister Guillermo Capobianco, Lopez said, adding that Paz Zamora and his sister Rosario are to give statements March 20 in the city of Tarija.
Lopez said the witness list likewise includes the widow of the late drug kingpin Isaac “Oso” Chavarria and other reputed associates of people involved in the illicit trade.
The prosecutor said the probe could eventually lead to indictments against not only Arostegui, but others as well, though he did not mention any names.
The MIR’s Eid, for his part, told EFE Thursday that he hopes prosecutors will act within the “framework of due process,” pointing out that the original narco links investigation was known in its time as an “open-ended operation.”
“For us,” he said, “it was always a kind of political persecution in judicial form.”
In a bid to clear his name, Paz Zamora sought a trial in Congress during the 1993-1997 administration of his conservative successor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, but lawmakers rejected the request on the grounds that no one had formally accused the ex-president.
