Bolivian ex-dictator, Luis Garcia Meza, who was serving a lengthy prison sentence for crimes committed after his 1980 military coup, died Sunday in a La Paz hospital at the age of 88, his attorney told local media.
Garcia Meza died of cardiac arrest and respiratory failure at the Cossmil military hospital in La Paz, where the former general had spent more than a third of his 30-year prison sentence, attorney Frank Campero said.
Garcia Meza took power in a violent military coup in July 1980, near the end of the period of military dictatorships in Latin America.
Scores of people, including socialist leader, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, were killed as his forces seized power. Quiroga’s body was never found.
A fierce anti-communist, Garcia Meza tortured opponents and launched a sweeping crack down on leftist dissenters. The regime even sought advice from Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, who helped set up a death squad.
In one notable case eight leaders of Bolivia’s leftist MIR party were tortured and murdered by paramilitary operatives in the Sopocachi neighborhood of La Paz in January 1981.
The sole survivor, Gloria Ardaya, escaped the slaughter by hiding under a bed.
