La Paz, Bolivia – Bolivian President Evo Morales criticized the United States on Wednesday after learning that a U.S. citizen had been arrested and accused of a pair of dynamite attacks that took two lives and left 11 injured in La Paz.
Decrying the violence, the Socialist head of state asked “publicly” of authorities in Washington “that no terrorists come to Bolivia to kill innocent people, to stage attacks in hotels, as happened yesterday (Tuesday).”
“Is there a war on terrorism by the United States government or are they sending Americans to carry out terrorism in Bolivia?” Morales asked in the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, at the inauguration of a plan to provide nearly 2 million Bolivians with identity cards, a project being carried out with Venezuelan aid.
The leftist leader, without citing evidence, seemed convinced that the brains behind the attacks were “businessmen” and “oligarchs” who, “using foreign agents” to try to frighten people and create an atmosphere of anxiety, wanted to show him up as a head of state unable keep his own country under control.
Hours before Morales’ declarations, U.S. citizen Claudio Lestat, 25, and his companion, the Uruguayan Alda Ribeiros, 35, were arrested by police in the town of El Alto near La Paz for their suspected role in the attacks.
Both were accused by the public prosecutor’s office as responsible for the explosions on Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday that left two dead and 11 injured in two hotels, one downtown and the other on the north side of La Paz. The pair could face 30 years in prison.
Police suggested late Wednesday that the bombings could have a religious motivation.
“The police will continue their investigations to establish probable links and do not rule out that the motives could be religious,” said police chief Gen. Isaac Pimentel, at a press conference where the suspects were trotted out.
“The two perpetrators have been fully identified,” Pimentel said, showing photographs in which the Uruguayan woman strikes a model pose naked on top of cases of explosives.
Pimentel said that the two suspects also attacked the Kasani post on the Bolivian-Peruvian border last week, and sent a package of explosives to a Uruguayan judge last year.
Considered to be conclusive evidence was a diary of the accused, written in English, in which police found the date March 25 marked by the terrorists for an attack against the Chilean Consulate in La Paz.
Lestat entered Bolivia last September and Ribeiro arrived in December, both from Argentina where they had been tried for attempting to blow open an ATM with explosives, the police chief said.
The official added that the American, who remained calm before before the media, used at least two other identity documents with different names, and in one of them appeared as a priest.
According to the official report, the accused employed 120 dynamite cartridges for the first of the two attacks and “more than 100” in the second.
The explosions were set off on the second floor of the hotels, one of which was downtown and the other in northern La Paz.
The first blast killed two people – a Bolivian man and woman – and wounded four others at the Linares Guest House. Several nearby homes were also damaged.
The second blast, in which four people were wounded, came at the Residencial Riosinho near the highway leading to the neighboring city of El Alto.
At the Riosinho, a hotel worker smelled something burning on the second floor, called police and effected an evacuation of the 19 guests, among them several foreigners.
The U.S. Embassy here had no immediate comment on the report of the arrest of one of its citizens, saying it was investigating.
A judicial authority said that the American had said in his first statement to the police that he had tried to kill more than a hundred people.
Before the press conference, Ribeiro shouted that she was innocent and that the only one guilty was her husband.
“You have to kill my husband, you have to kill him,” said the woman, who also appeared calm when shown to reporters.
The woman’s words, plus the fact that the American’s knapsack held several meters of the same kind of fuse used to detonate the dynamite in the attacks, point to Lestat as the perpetrator, the authorities said.
The explosions caused surprise and indignation in Bolivia, a country little accustomed to violence of this kind, bringing with them a wave of social unease, heightened by two false bomb threats during the morning, one at a university and the other in the central post office of La Paz.
