Bolivian attorney general blacklisted by U.S. is arrested over alleged drug cartel ties, government source says

Bolivian police arrested Attorney General Roger Mariaca on Wednesday, two days after the United States revoked his visa over alleged links to drug trafficking, a government source told AFP.

“The arrest of Prosecutor Mariaca has been confirmed,” said a source from the Ministry of Government, who requested anonymity.

Santa Cruz prosecutor Alberto Zeballos, who has likewise been sanctioned by Washington, was also arrested, according to local media.

Both were among the nearly 20 people from Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador whom the U.S. State Department accused this week of corruption, links to drug trafficking, or conspiring against their respective governments.

Police also raided the prosecutor’s offices in Sucre on Wednesday, as seen in a live broadcast on the institution’s social media accounts.

“We denounce before the entire Bolivian population this intervention that is being carried out illegally,” the office’s head of communications Claudia Pardo said as she and several colleagues were surrounded by hooded police officers, the video showed.

According to the Reuters news agency, a prosecutor’s office official reported the “abduction” of Mariaca during a live broadcast. Local media said Mariaca had been detained at Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz, Reuters reported.

The Office of the Attorney General and the Santa Cruz prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests for comment.

The U.S. State Department said Monday that Mariaca received “bribes to facilitate drug trafficking and help violent criminals evade justice.”

The attorney general denied the accusations on Monday and insisted in a statement to the press that the decision is an act of “interference” and “political pressure” in response to his investigations.

The U.S. revoked the visas of 12 Bolivian officials and nine other Bolivian nationals who do not currently have visas were rendered ineligible to receive them.

Earlier this year, notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to U.S. authorities after being arrested in Bolivia. Marset, who was on the U.S.’ most-wanted fugitives list, was passed to agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport, then put on a U.S. airplane, state TV showed. In March, he made his first appearance in a federal court in Virginia.