Bolivia: Flores, Dwyer, Arpad, it gets murkier

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Sunday November 22, 2009 14:46 by Andrew

A Bolivian state TV broadcast of mobile phone video that appears to show Flores, Dwyer, Arpad etc discussing a missed opportunity to blow up Morala's and his cabanet on Lake Titicaca
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT-ErWIpDC4

A pretty detailed summary of events at http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6178 includes what appears to be this transcript from the video "Shit, if only I had known in time about the government session in Titicaca the other day. I would have sent one of these guys (an image of his comrades Dwyer and Arpak, along with Tadic next to a column, appears) in scuba gear to blow up the boat. Every single last one, every single last one of them was there; not one was missing," Rózsa says with the boastfulness of a leader. "

http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6178

The reference to scuba gear and a water borne attack on a boat is of considerable interest in relation to the sinking of Pat O'Donnells fishing boat by armed and masked men in June and the question of who might have had the necessary training to perform such an attack and successfully get away afterwards.

From the same summary
"The government's strategy was explicit. In the words of the vice president: "It must be established who brought these foreign terrorists from Croatia, Ireland … who is maintaining them, who is giving them money to live in one hotel or another. The government is not going to rest one second until we find the other branches, the other terrorist and mercenary cells, but primarily the financiers, those who paid them to commit this type of attack.
So it was on May 4 that the District Attorney Marcelo Sosa gave a brief press conference in which a few fundamental facts were disclosed. .. Sosa mentioned the former president of the Civic Committee of Santa Cruz, Branko Marinkovic, of Croatian origin, the governor of the State, Ruben Costas, the present civic vice president and leading rancher, Guido Nayar, and the president of the Private Business Federation of Santa Cruz, Pedro Yovio. He also spoke of the president of the Chamber of Eastern Agriculture (CAO) Mauricio Roca, Costas' attorney, Luis Alberto Hurtado Vaca,."

Branko Marinkovic together with Shell owned the gaspipe line that Morales had nationised a few months before these events

Oner footnote is worth quoting as it answers the question of who was paying for the hotel
"According to the May 6 edition of La Prensa, Hernán Rossel, manager of the Hotel Las Américas, confirmed that Hurtado Vaca made a 30-day reservation for six people and paid in cash. Evelin Leigue, of the Gran Hotel Santa Cruz, confirmed that Luis Hurtado registered the group between April 3-14, for which he paid 13,000 Bolivianos in cash. Rómulo Estivariz, lawyer for Lorena Rojas and manager of the Hotel Asturias, stated that Hurtado Vaca paid around 60,000 Bolivianos in cash for a 70-day stay, during which time seven people stayed at that establishment."

One of the stranger revelations of the last couple of months have been the apparance of three photos of Capitán Wálter Andrade, who led the Special forces raid in which Dwyer and Flores were killed socialising with Flores in February. One government official has hinted that this is because he had infiltrated the group
http://www.la-razon.com/versiones/20090929_006865/nota_...4.htm

Also an apparent revenge killing in June "Rufina Morales, aunt of the President of Bolivia, who was found dismembered in June in Cochabamba, denounced on Wednesday that this crime was part of a plan to kill president Evo Morales, hatched by the Croatian-Bolivian mercenary Eduardo Rózsa Flores, who headed an irregular group dismantled by police in April."
http://www.hollow-hill.com/sabina/2009/07/vampire_bat_r....html

One Bolivian TV station broadcast a video of the aftermath of the raid on the hotel shot by the Special Forces team is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbgfm2SOK4 it includes the discovery of what appears to be a bag of C4 explosives around the mid point (C4 had been used in the bombing of the cardinals house the previous day which was the trigger for the raid) The 'Karen' whose phone rings towards the end is another police officer who is also in a video with some of the succesionists shot before the raid.