Bolivia: bombing kills two

Bill Weinberg

We sure hope this is just a couple of lone wackos and not the beginning of a destabilization campaign against Evo Morales. An AP report indicates suspect Triston Jay Amero of California “has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since he was seven-years-old”—which is comforting for us, even if it doesn’t seem to have done him much good. Still, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t being paid or manipulated by the CIA (or somebody). From Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 26:

A US citizen and an Uruguayan citizen will be charged with homicide for two bomb attacks in La Paz that killed two people between the night of Mar. 21 and the early morning of Mar. 22. US citizen Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo and Uruguayan citizen Alda Ribeiro Acosta, who apparently owned a dynamite business in the southern Bolivian city of Potosi, reportedly confessed to placing the explosives. The first attack destroyed the low-budget Linares hotel, killing a couple staying there and wounding 11 people; police managed to evacuate the second target, an hospedaje near a bus terminal, before the bomb there exploded. De Orleans and Ribeiro had also apparently planned a bomb attack against the Chilean consulate in La Paz, with the idea of creating a diplomatic conflict between Bolivia and Chile. The attacks at the hotels took place a day before the 127th anniversary marking Bolivia’s loss of its coast to Chile in a war. Data from Interpol indicated that De Orleans and Ribeiro were detained in the northern Argentine province of Jujuy for six months in 2005 for trying to blow up a bank automatic teller machine. (Inter Press Service, March 22)

According to a report in the Chilean daily La Nacion, De Orleans is actually Triston Jay Amero, a fan of satanic literature who once sought election to the school board in El Dorado, near Sacramento, California. His criminal history includes credit card fraud–defrauding an internet dating site, specifically–as well as weapons purchase and suspected other explosive attacks. He is believed to be linked to at least two bomb attacks in Colombia, where he apparently went looking to meet women. (LN, March 25)

See our last report on terror scares in Bolivia.

See our last post on Bolivia.

  1. Suspect blames Evo
    From AP, April 13:

    American suspect blames hotel blasts on Bolivian government

    LA PAZ, Bolivia — An American charged with setting off hotel explosions that killed two people said Thursday he was innocent and accused the Bolivian government of being behind the attacks.
    Triston Jay Amero, 24, and his pregnant Uruguayan girlfriend, Alda Ribeiro, 45, were charged with the bombings on March 22 and are in jail awaiting trial.

    The bombs, set off in two low cost hotels in the historic district of the Bolivian capital, La Paz, killed two Bolivians and injured seven people, including an American woman.
    ”I’ve been accused of this crime, but I didn’t do it,” Amero told reporters as police took him to the blast sites in La Paz as part of the investigation.
    ”I think it was the government of (Bolivian President) Evo Morales,” said Amero, who was arrested on the day of the explosions.
    Morales, who was inaugurated in January initially suggested that the United States was responsible for the bombings, saying ”The U.S. government fights terrorism, and they send us terrorists.”
    The U.S. State Department complained, saying the remarks harmed efforts to cooperate against terrorism, and Morales said earlier this month he had accepted the U.S. explanation of the incident.
    ”We thank the U.S. government for collaborating with the police to capture the responsible parties,” he said after meeting with the U.S. ambassador.
    Amero has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since he was 7 years old and has frequently made threats of suicide and violence against authorities, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press. He spent years in California’s juvenile prisons after being convicted of fleeing the scene of an accident and spitting on a judge and court clerk.
    In travels through South America, Amero has described himself as a Saudi Arabian lawyer, a pagan high priest, a notary public and even a vampire, having adopted ”Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo” as his name.
    Amero was convicted of bombing an ATM in northern Argentina last year before he arrived in Bolivia, where he was seeking residency.