Jeanine Áñez: the former president of Bolivia is sentenced to 10 years in prison

The illegalities were committed when assuming the interim presidency of Bolivia in 2019, after the army forced Evo Morales to resign, in an act considered by the ruling party as a “coup d’état”.

The 54-year-old lawyer was tried without any immunity.

“The evidence provided and presented in court has been sufficient to generate in the court the full conviction of their participation and criminal responsibility in the aforementioned crimes, sentencing them (Añez and two other former officials) to 10 years’ imprisonment,” he said. Judge Germán Ramos, according to the Efe agency.

Áñez faced the legal process virtually from jail. According to the authorities, the politician represented a “flight risk”, for which she remained in detention.

The former president questioned the legal process this Friday. She said that she was denied “due process” of law.

In addition, she stated that she was accused of crimes “that she did not commit” and was not allowed to defend herself in freedom.

In principle, she had been accused in two cases that she considers part of “political persecution.”

For which she was sentenced this Friday, the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office called it “coup d’état II”. While she was also facing a case called “coup d’état 1”, which includes charges of terrorism, sedition and conspiracy for the violence that arose after the resignation of Morales, who was seeking a fourth re-election as president.

Who is Jeanine Áñez?

A native of Beni, in the north-central part of the country, Áñez came to Bolivian national politics in 2006, when she was elected as a representative of that department in the Constituent Assembly that approved the Constitution in force since 2009.

During this process, she was a member of the Commission for the Organization and Structure of the Country and worked on the part of the Judiciary.

Once the new Magna Carta was approved, Áñez was elected as senator for her region by the defunct and opposition Plan Progreso and National Convergence alliance.

In her second term, which began in 2015, she stood out for her rejection of a possible fourth Morales term and for her work in favor of the prevention of femicides and violence against women.

Áñez has two children and is married to a Colombian politician, Héctor Hincapié, who was a candidate for the Colombian Senate in 2018 for the Conservative Party.

She was the second woman to hold the presidency of Bolivia. Her predecessor was Lidia Gueiler Tejada, who led the country between 1979 and 1980, when she was overthrown by a military coup.