Bolivian president Evo Morales has said he would welcome a multi-nation investigation into the alleged attempt on his life last week.
Three foreigners were killed in Santa Cruz in the police operation. They included a man from Ireland and one with joint Bolivian-Hungarian-Croatian nationality.
Prior to the shoot-out, after which two other foreign men were arrested, Mr Morales ordered increased security measures after claiming to have received intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent.
Today he released a photograph of a man lying in bed with automatic weapons either side of him to news network Al Jazeera. It is not clear from the photograph who the man nor whether he is dead or alive.
Both countries have publicly denied any involvement with an attempt to overthrow the current Bolivian government. President Morales also asked US leader Barak Obama to deny any involvement, which he duly did on Monday.
Irish representatives have flown to Bolivia to identify the body of citizen Michael Dwyer. They also requested further information as to the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the suspected terrorists. Morales denied these requests saying it was “very serious” that countries with “no authority” would attempt to intervene in the Bolivian investigation.
“I am able to process them myself“, he said on Tuesday, speaking of the deaths. Irish foreign minister Michael Martin said they had “the right to discover how one of their citizens was killed”.
Today, Mr Morales invited “the foreign secretary, or whomever else, to come to Bolivia and verify how they did it, how they launched bombs, how armed they were”.
Although he did not directly accuse the Irish, Croatian and Hungarian governments of being involved, he said he would be surprised if they tried to defend the actions of their citizens.
