Bolivia’s Supreme Court has overturned the 10-year prison sentence of former interim President Jeanine Anez, who was convicted over an alleged plot to oust her left-wing predecessor, Evo Morales.
Supreme Court Justice Romer Saucedo told reporters on Wednesday that the sentence against Anez, who has been imprisoned for more than four years, had been annulled based on “violations” of due process during her trial.
“She had a final sentence of 10 years, and consequently, her release is ordered today,” Saucedo said.
Anez, a former conservative senator, declared herself Bolivia’s interim leader in 2019 after Morales fled the country following mass demonstrations over alleged election fraud during his controversial bid for a fourth term.
Morales, the South American country’s first Indigenous president, claimed he was the victim of a coup after the military called for him to step down following weeks of unrest.
Anez’s administration oversaw a crackdown on the protests that saw at least 35 people killed and 833 others injured, according to the rights group Amnesty International.
Anez was arrested in 2021 after Morales’s left-wing Movement for Socialism (MAS) party returned to power a year earlier, and was convicted in 2022 for illegally assuming the presidency.
Saucedo, the Supreme Court justice, said on Wednesday that Anez should have been tried by a special court in charge of trying crimes by lawmakers in the course of their duties and not by the criminal justice system.
Anez did not immediately comment on the court’s ruling.
In a social media post on Tuesday, she had defended her record, saying she would “never regret having served my country when it needed me”.
“I did it with a clear conscience and a steadfast heart, knowing that difficult decisions come at a price,” she wrote.
The Supreme Court’s ruling came just weeks after Bolivian voters elected Rodrigo Paz of the centre-right Christian Democratic Party (PDC) as their new president, ending almost 20 years of governance by MAS.
