Bolivia opens investigation into Morales over 2009 killings of three Europeans

Bolivia's attorney general opened a formal investigation into former president Evo Morales this week, accusing him of orchestrating the murder and torture of five European citizens during a 2009 police raid in Santa Cruz. The case, dormant for seventeen years, centers on a single night when officers stormed a hotel and shot dead three men: Eduardo Rózsa Flores, a Bolivian-Croatian; Michael Dwyer, an Irishman; and Árpád Magyarosi, a Hungarian-Romanian. Two others—Mario Tadic, also Bolivian-Croatian, and Elöd Tóásó from Hungary—survived the raid but reported being tortured in custody afterward.

At the time, Morales's government framed the operation as a counterinsurgency measure. Officials claimed Rózsa Flores was organizing a separatist movement bankrolled by Santa Cruz's right-wing economic establishment. When the raid occurred, Morales was in Venezuela on an official visit. He told reporters he had personally ordered the detention of the foreigners, whom he described as mercenaries. That public statement would later become central to the case against him.

The investigation was formally announced Monday by acting attorney general José Armando Urioste, just one week into his tenure. In a letter to Bolivia's supreme court, Urioste stated that authorities were gathering evidence against Morales and his former vice-president Álvaro García Linera for murder, abuse, torture, and unlawful detention. The complaint originated from rightwing lawmakers Tomasa Yarhui and Rodrigo Antonio, who filed the charges that triggered the preliminary inquiry.

For years, the case seemed closed. But in 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a finding that the Bolivian government had violated human rights in its handling of the raid and detention. That international judgment gave new weight to the victims' families, who had pursued the matter across borders and through international bodies when domestic channels appeared exhausted. The commission's conclusion created legal and political pressure that eventually reached Bolivia's new attorney general.

Moreles, who became Bolivia's first Indigenous president, is currently evading two active arrest warrants. One stems from his alleged role in organizing massive protests that paralyzed the country for fifty-three days earlier this year. The other accuses him of trafficking a minor with whom he is said to have fathered a child. He has denied both allegations and remains in hiding. Neither Morales nor García Linera has commented on the new investigation into the 2009 deaths. The case now sits in preliminary stages, with authorities still gathering evidence, but it adds another layer of legal jeopardy to a former leader already facing multiple criminal inquiries and a nation still processing the consequences of his tenure.