On the event date, former Bolivian interim president Jeanine Áñez left prison after the country's Supreme Court of Justice annulled her 10-year sentence and ordered her immediate release.
The AP report says Áñez walked out of Miraflores women's prison in La Paz on Thursday, smiling and waving a Bolivian flag as supporters celebrated. Her release is the latest turn in a case that has become a symbol of Bolivia's unresolved struggle over the political meaning of the 2019 crisis that led to Evo Morales' resignation.
Áñez had been imprisoned for more than four years. According to the packet, she was arrested in March 2021 and convicted in June 2022 over how she assumed the presidency in a controversial National Assembly session after the 2019 protests. Those protests followed an election that the Organization of American States denounced as fraudulent and left 37 people dead.
The court's ruling did more than free Áñez. It also ordered a political trial, and the justices said her actions were protected by a state of constitutional necessity aimed at preserving institutional continuity. That language matters because it closes one legal chapter while reopening another: the question of whether Bolivia experienced a coup or an emergency transfer of authority after Morales stepped down.
The political timing is also notable. The court's decision came just days before the inauguration of president-elect Rodrigo Paz, who won a historic election on Oct. 19 and ended nearly two decades of dominance by Morales' Movement Toward Socialism. Paz invited Áñez to attend the ceremony, and her daughter suggested she might be there, signaling that the former interim president's return to public life could quickly become part of the country's new political symbolism.
The AP says Áñez also claimed she had never regretted serving when Bolivia needed her and framed her release as a vindication against accusations that she was a criminal. Her legal troubles, however, are not fully over in a broader sense. The report notes that while several convictions have been annulled, other accusations remain in the background, even if no ordinary-court case was pending at the moment of release.
What makes the story significant is not just that Áñez is free. It is that the court has shifted the legal narrative around the 2019 transition, and it did so at a moment when Bolivia is preparing for a new political era. Her release closes a long and painful prison chapter, but it also ensures that the dispute over what happened five years ago will continue to shape the country's politics.
