Bolivia asks U.S. to extradite ex-president Sanchez de Lozada

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Bolivian officials say they have formally asked the United States to extradite former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who ordered a military crackdown on 2003 riots in which at least 60 people died. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Consuelo Ponce tells The Associated Press that the 2,700-page request charging the exiled leader with «genocide» was delivered Monday.  U.S. government offices were closed Tuesday for Veterans' Day and officials there could not be reached for comment. Sanchez de Lozada went to the U.S. during the anti-government riots after troops under his command opened fire on largely Aymara Indian protesters. Critics call the extradition a political crusade by leftist President Evo Morales.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Consuelo Ponce told the Associated Press that the 2,700-page request charging the exiled leader with "genocide" was delivered Monday.
In recent months, US-Bolivia relations have become increasingly strained with La Paz accusing Washington of fostering government-change-seeking opposition in the Andean nation.  RB/MMN Original source at PressTV

Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Sánchez Bustamante (born July 1, 1930, La Paz), familiarly known as "Goni", is a Bolivian politician, businessman, and former president. A life-long member of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), he is credited for using "shock therapy", the economic theory championed by Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. This measure was used by Bolivia in 1985 (when Sánchez de Lozada was President of the Senate in the government of president Víctor Paz Estenssoro) to cut hyperinflation from an estimated 25,000% to a single digit within a period of 6 weeks. More broadly, he is credited with having engineered the restructuring of the Bolivian state and the dismantling the state-capitalist model that had prevailed in the country since the 1952 Revolution.