Jul 9, 2009, 20:55 GMT
La Paz - A former interior minister of the dictatorship that ruled Bolivia from 1980-81 arrived in the South American country Thursday to serve a 30-year prison sentence in La Paz, after being deported from the United States.
'We acknowledge the work of the United States justice system to deport Luis Arce Gomez,' Bolivian President Evo Morales said. 'It is a historic day for human rights and to reflect on dictatorships. Justice comes sooner or later.'
Arce Gomez, 71, the man nicknamed the dictatorship's 'cocaine minister,' was released on parole in November from prison in the US state of Florida, after serving 18 years for smuggling drugs into the United States.
Bolivian authorities then obtained his deportation, to serve a pending sentence in the Andean country. He arrived on a commercial flight early Thursday and was taken by wheelchair to a police vehicle. He is almost blind and suffers serious health problems.
Current Interior Minister Alfredo Rada and scores of police officers were awaiting his arrival. Gomez was to serve his jail sentence outside La Paz at the Chonchocoro Prison, where his former boss, junta chief Luis Garcia Meza, was already being held.
Considered the most powerful member of the military dictatorship, Arce Gomez is widely believed to have financed much of its activity through narcotics trafficking. He was infamous for a threat to opponents of the junta that they should 'walk around with their written will under their arms.'
The Bolivian Supreme Court in 1993 sentenced him to a 30-year prison sentence for armed uprising, organization of paramilitary groups, genocide and crimes against freedom of the press.
He was arrested in December 1989 in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and extradited to the United States.
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