Hours earlier, Douglas Uzquiano, director of the Special Force to Fight Crime (FELCC), had assured that it was a suicide attempt in the prison where she has been detained since the beginning of 2021, and that she was being treated by doctors.
“It is within the crime of attempted suicide (…) The forensic doctor has come to the place to make a diagnosis to Mrs. Jeanine Áñez to give an evaluation of the state in which she is,” Uzquiano told a television channel .
However, Eduardo del Castillo said that “this news (of a suicide attempt) is totally ruled out.”
On Friday, Jorge Quiroz, Áñez’s lawyer, had warned that the former president’s life “is in danger” in the custody of the authorities.
“It is not understood, in the health condition that she has, that she is quite deteriorated, which is public knowledge, having high blood pressure raises it to more than 4,000 meters above sea level,” said the lawyer, after a medical check on Áñez.
“What is the intention of the government? Definitely, at the moment Jeanine Áñez’s life in the hands of the government is in danger,” Quiroz told the Bolivian news agency ANF.
The former president had been transferred on Wednesday for the third time in two weeks to the hospital, where doctors said she had a chest exam and that she suffered from hypertension. He later returned to prison.
The former president, who is imprisoned awaiting trial, was arrested in early 2021 on charges of participating in a coup to overthrow the leader Evo Morales in 2019. Áñez denies the accusations and says she is the victim of persecution politics .
Bolivia is now ruled by socialist president Luis Arce, who belongs to Morales’ party.
