Opposition Governor Returns to Prison After Medical Examinations Spark Controversy

La Paz, Sep 6 (EFE).- The governor of the Bolivian region of Santa Cruz, the opposition Luis Fernando Camacho, returned to prison on Wednesday after undergoing specialized medical examinations in a hospital, amid a controversy between his defense that denounced that there was “hermeticism” and the national authorities that denied it.

After staying for seven hours in the Hospital del Sur in the city of El Alto, neighboring La Paz, Camacho was taken back to the maximum security prison of Chonchocoro, in the highlands, where he has been imprisoned since the end of 2022 in a process by the social and political crisis of 2019.

The governor’s lawyer, Martín Camacho, told the media that tests such as tomographies, ultrasounds and some blood tests were performed on him, but he maintained that the “most important ones, which are cardiology tests,” were not carried out.

The jurist deplored the “secrecy with which” the director of the Penitentiary Regime, Juan Carlos Limpias, is handled, for having requested that the results of the exams “be delivered to him and not to the judicial authority.”

“(This) makes us very suspicious of what the result of these tests will be,” he said and also questioned the “paraphernalia” and the “media show” that, in his opinion, Limpias led to in the operation for the return of Camacho to jail.

“He has even organized a persecution, a kind of rally outside the Hospital del Sur, in which we do not understand what was the reason for putting the lives of civilians, of the people who accompanied the governor, at risk,” the lawyer said.

Limpias denied in a press conference that there was secrecy and assured that Camacho had been accompanied since the day before by his son.

The official maintained that 18 tests were carried out, which was possible due to the good “predisposition” of the governor and his family, with whom he coordinated since Tuesday for his transfer to the hospital.

According to Limpias, the “regular channel” is that the results of the studies first reach the Penitentiary Regime and the prison “to be part of Camacho’s clinical history” and then his relatives or he himself can request the documents by means of a note to Have your doctors check them out.

He also defended that the security operation for the transfer of Camacho was “to avoid any situation that could occur” in the event of the presence or action of groups related to or contrary to the politician.

The person in charge of Health of the Penitentiary Regime, Mariana García, indicated for her part that the governor returned to prison “without any setback”, that he is “stable” and that the results of his studies will be known in 48 to 72 hours.

Camacho suffers from Churg-Strauss syndrome, a disease that causes inflammation of the blood vessels and can cause permanent damage to the organs, for which he needs special medication and constant medical evaluations, and also suffers from high blood pressure.

Concern about his state of health arose after he was seen to be much thinner in a virtual hearing at the end of July and, according to his defense, with an “obvious deterioration in his health.”

Camacho has four processes open, one of them for the coup d’état case I” due to the 2019 crisis, and since he was arrested in December 2022, preventive detention has been extended, a measure that his defense considers “illegal”.