Photos of Bolivian ex-president in prison keep making the media, daughter charges ‘psychological and physical torture’

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Jeanine Añez is held by Bolivian courts as a “flight risk” and because of fear she might “interfere with investigations,” but her daughter Carolina Ribera says that by allowing pictures of the jailed former leader prison authorities are interfering with her mother’s privacy in actions that amount to psychological and emotional torture, and “physical harassment.”

Ribera says the ruling MAS party is using her mother as a political trophy and “so they believe they have the right to violate her in all those ways.”

“It is a type of harassment to take her pictures clandestinely, without her authorization, to Photoshop it, edit, and to publish it in all the networks and to tell lies about her. It is because of this that my mother is suffering physical and emotional torture,” said her daughter in a television interview decrying a widely published picture of her mother on her prison bed, eating. The picture was later shown to be Photoshopped with the addition of fries and a Burger King bag. This was relevant because Añez has claimed health issues with high blood pressure and, according to a Bolivian verification site, she was eating an avocado and not fried fast foods.

“She is feeling harassed in this form because this generates certain rejection, certain discomfort in the condition in which she is because she feels invaded,” charged her daughter.

Añez is being held in La Paz’s Miraflores Women’s prison among high-security inmates who are serving sentences of more than 8 years.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Charles Manson and Star: the wedding of the year did not take place

Charles Manson
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The wedding that was to join one of the most famous American serial killers, Charles Manson, now 80 years old, and 27-years-old Afton Elaine Burton (renamed “Star” by Manson) finally will not take place.

Indeed, after filing a marriage license application last November, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton confirmed this week that the marriage license had expired on Feb. 5 and no wedding vows would be traded within the state prison in Corcoran, where the guru is serving a life sentence.

Charles Manson was sentenced to death (which was later changed to a life sentence) with four of his disciples in August 1969 for the death of seven people, including the wife of director Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, who was stabbed when she was eight months pregnant. In the 1960s, Manson had formed a community known as the Manson Familly, and it is alleged that he thought he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and wanted to provoke the emergence of a struggle between whites and blacks. He thought that the first would emerge victorious.

Despite this psychopathic portrait, Burton said that her love for Manson had nothing to do with the horrible acts, which she denies.

“Sharon Tate was not a movie star,” stated Burton. “Even now, no one has ever really heard of her, even if she is supposed to have been killed by Charlie, the most famous guy in the world. And that’s the only reason people know who she is.”

Burton said that she fell in love with theories of environmental protection advocated by the killer. Manson named this theory ATWA (air, trees, water and animals), the main idea of which was, according to Manson “the air is God, because without air we do not exist.” According to him, killing “to get more air” is required. “Without murder, we just have no chance.”

All parole applications requested by Manson (a dozen) have been denied.

His next hearing will take place in 2027. Charles Manson will be 92 years old and will have spent 56 years behind the bars.

By Esther Hervy