Bolivia accuses ex-president Morales of ‘staged’ assassination attempt

Bolivia’s government on Monday accused former president Evo Morales of staging an attempt on his own life, saying that the shots fired at his car on Sunday came after he tried to run a police checkpoint.

“Mr Morales, nobody believes the theatre you have staged,” Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo told a news conference.

He added that Morales, who claims the government tried to kill him, would “have to answer … for the crime of attempted murder” of a police officer.

Del Castillo claimed the car in which Morales was travelling failed to stop at a checkpoint set up by police to combat drug trafficking in central Chapare province, one of the country’s biggest producers of coca, the raw material for cocaine.

He said the police motioned for the vehicle to slow down and stop but that the driver instead accelerated, and that “shots were fired from a vehicle”.

He said an officer was run over but survived, before a police patrol gave chase to Morales’s car and fired on it.