While the Tropic of Cochabamba remains in a state of emergency today around Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales, the Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that it will ask for six months of preventive detention against the indigenous leader, according to an official source.

The state attorney general, Róger Mariaca, affirmed that, in view of the official accusation and indictment for human trafficking and smuggling in the Departmental Prosecutor’s Office of Tarija, a six-month period of preventive detention will be requested.

Meanwhile, after learning that an arrest warrant had been issued against the ex-president, the senator of the pro-Morales Movement Towards Socialism, Leonardo Loza, maintained that the indigenous leader was unaware of this process because he had never been notified or summoned to his home in the Chapare.

According to the legislator, this decision against Morales expresses the government’s «political fear» of him, which is why he denounced that the process is political and that due process is not observed in Bolivia.

When asked if there are any guarantees for the police to notify the ex-president, Loza limited himself to pointing out that it is the government that must provide guarantees for all institutions, and recalled that the Tropic of Cochabamba, Morales’ political stronghold, has been in a state of emergency for a long time.

The day before, the Tarija prosecutor, Sandra Gutiérrez, confirmed that she had formally charged the former president with the crime of human trafficking, with the aggravating circumstance that he allegedly committed this crime when he was president.

She also stated that the alleged victim’s mother, Idelsa Pozo Saavedra, was named as a defendant in the case, and identified the then minor as Cindy S.V.P.

He reported that the arrest warrant against Morales was issued on 16 October for failing to appear to testify before the complaint against him for the alleged relationship he had in 2015 with a minor, from which a girl was born, he said.

Gutiérrez recalled that Cindy S.V.P.’s father was arrested in October and has been in prison since October.

However, he clarified that the police could not execute the arrest warrant against Morales in the Chapare because the operation could unleash organised resistance, with the corresponding political and social risk in that region of the department of Cochabamba.

He indicated that police reports indicate that the areas of influence where Bolivia’s first indigenous ex-president is said to be are under protection, and that the address he is said to have given is also uninhabited and without substantial movement.

Gutiérrez reiterated that he will request the preventive detention of both people and an immigration alert because there is a «risk of flight, of obstruction and others which, at the hearing, we will substantiate, as well as all the facts, evidence and accumulated proof».