Mátyás Józsa, the Hungarian Ambassador to Argentina, flew to La Paz to visit Előd Tóásó and make arrangements for the return of Árpad Magyarosi's body to his homeland. After visiting Tóásó in the jail, Mr.Józsa confirmed that Tóásó was beaten by rifle butt when captured.
He also visited Marcelo Sosa, the chief persecutor of Bolivia who was reluctant receiving him. According to the ambassador, the law firm hired to represent Tóásó will request a medical examination report about the condition of the captured man. The ambassador said that he would be present during the examination of Tóásó.
The ambassador said that despite repeated requests, Bolivian authorities hadn't provided any official information about the incident; the only source of information the Hungarian government has is the media.
He also said he had received all necessary permits from Bolivian officials to return Árpad Magyarosi's body to his homeland.
In the next couple of days, Mr. Józsa will travel to Santa Cruz to find out what actually happened when security forces killed two Hungarian nationals. He also said that he wouldn't recommend Hungarians to travel Bolivia at this time, because of the tense political situation.
Előd Tóásó's website
(index.hu - hungarianambiance.com)
Előd Tóásó was beaten by rifle butt
Thursday, April 23, 2009Posted by HungarianAmbiance at 9:00 PM
Labels: Hungary, The Bolivian dossier
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21 comments:
Help! Elod Tóásó needs bullets for his gun. Interested in this humanitarian cause, send bullets and ammunition to bank account 666-666-6666666. For more details, check:
http://abi.bo/fotografias/2009/04/28/0020.jpg
well, illegal possession of weapons is not punishable by torture or ill-treatment or extrajudicial execution. nothing is... and it's also not a proof of assassination attempt or plot.
to be honest, i find it quite strange that morales' forces went on to kill three people and now we have to wait for weeks for evidence that they were really guilty of what morales accuses them of. i mean didn't he already have sufficient and solid evidence when he ordered the raid, resulting in execution of three (most likely unarmed at the time) people and ill-treatment of others?
I don't justify torture or ill treatment. But, on the other hand, I won't accept that a guy obsessed with guns, who was paid to stay and do military (and who know what else) training in a country which reality he couldn't even understand, who every day that passes look less and less "inocent", is defended as a poor hero mistreated by evil bolivians. No way!
They had enough evidence to raid the hotel, then more evidence appeared. It's always like that in any investigation all over the world. Some evidence first, raid or detention afterwards, more evidence appears then. There's nothing strange about that.
Funny they way some people find excuses all the time. In the beginning, they had nothing to do with nothing at all. Then first pictures appeared. Ok, they liked guns, nothing more. Then the Rozsa interview. Ok, they had something to do with militias in Santa Cruz. More pictures, the cellphone video. Right, ok, they were in some plot, but it was unfair how they were treated. Each new evidence that appears, some people find new excuses.
It'll be like this for ever and ever, I'm pretty sure about this.
well, as far as i'm concerned, from the beginning it seemed obvious they were executed. (the first news reports clearly were false, as they claimed they were killed while trying to assassinate morales)...
the pictures with guns (at least some of them) appeared on their blogs and facebook pages before anything happened as they put them there themselves. yesterday i was reading about the cellphone video and journalists saying that it has a very poor audio, that they were not able to verify what was really said (so, it's the "evidence" no one understands)... i also read that pictures could have been photoshopped and some made with airsoft guns; weapons found and shown to the press the first day were supposedly old and only suitable for training, not for an attempt to assassinate the president. claims by morales' side disputed by witnesses, cameras turned off... lot of people around the world do not buy morales' story about the assassination plot and they all say that it looks like those three people have been executed while sleeping...
the thing is - morales ordered the raid without court order and now he has not one single evidence to back up the assassination plot claim. he should show at least to the representatives of ireland, hungary and croatia the information on the basis of which he ordered the raid.
they are all innocent (regardless of what you think of their personalities and how they look to you) until proven guilty and some of them have already been grossly overpunished for something they have not done.
eduardo is a hero for things he has done earlier in his life and even though he has been suspected by some (but not in court) for some crimes they were never proven, which means he sofar remains innocent of them. he was also very much liked by everyone who knew him (including not just his neighbours and friends but also actors who acted in the movie with him). he wrote books, he was not just some crazy guy obsessed with guns and shooting. i think now at times he might have seemed so, but because he was trying to recruit and train an army with a certain political goal - autonomy or separation as he explained in the tape, but not just for the sake of killing or racism or right-wing ideology, as some are trying to present it now. you can't really make an army for santa cruz autonomy by recruiting peace-loving hippies, can you...
now, i think it was a totally wrong decision to go to bolivia and train an army (if that was indeed the case), but again i don't know what really is happening in bolivia. i'm sure that there is racism on the part of the rich minority, but i have also heard morales making racist remarks... anyway for me, violence is almost never the solution, only as a last resort to end grave human rights violations or to defend oneself from an attack, but again: morales and everyone else is alive and well, and they are dead (extra-judicially executed) and ill-treated.
Hum, funny how you say everyone is innocent until proven guilty (when talking about Rozsa and friends) but you don't apply the same to the bolivian police: they executed, because you say so.
If Rozsa and frienda were posing with guns in pictures inside the hotel Buganvillas (Photoshop? don't make me laugh, hahaha) it would be no surprise that they used weapons, or try to, when the police raidesd the rooms, would be? The manager in the hotel say this picture was in fact taken inside his hotel, so what photoshop are you talking about? Was Tóásó grabbing a broom which was photshopped? You see, that kind of things make me think that you will never accept that those guys were in some really ugly thing, no matter the proofs are.
some journalists say some pictures might have been photoshopped, i guess they weren't talking about this one. i wouldn't know, probably there are experts who can INVESTIGATE (i also said that this looks like possession of illegal weapons (i don't really know the bolivian laws), but that it is not a proof of intention to assassinate the president).
i will not accept what bolivian government tells us unless there is an impartial and thorough investigation into both their alleged assassination attempt as well as (and even more - because this interests me more since the victims here are the alleged attackers, not morales) into the raid by bolivian forces and unless the results of these investigations are made public. what is so wrong with a proper and impartial investigation and sharing its results with concerned states and citizens unless you have something to hide?
let me make myself clear once again:
1. please do properly investigate the alleged assassination attempt on bolivian president (which nobody really believes in) and make the results public. and please do not not investigate the incident, but keep repeating baseless accusations without any evidence in the interest of morales&co.'s domestic political gains or salvaging his reputation on the international scene.
2. please investigate the police raid, because right now the three killed human beings look (to most impartial observers) like they were executed (and tortured), even on pictures sent out by the bolivian authorities several hours after the raid commenced.
Foreign minister Péter Balázs said that Hungary will not tolerate any further delay in clearing up the case: “this in now a demand, and no longer a request”. The Bolivian authorities initially said they would provide information by Friday, 17 April as to how and why the Hungarian-Bolivian-Croatian citizen Eduardo Rózsa Flores, the Hungarian-Romanian citizen Árpád Magyarosi and the Irishman Michael Martin Dwyer were killed by commando unity of the Bolivian police in a hotel in Santa Cruz de la Sierra. So far, however, there has been no official statement from the Bolivian side.
Details of the killing, however, have gradually come to light. Based on the recording of Bolivian television channel PAT it seems clear that the three men did not lose their lives in a gun battle as the police initially claimed. Instead, they appear to have been summarily executed. There are concerns that several regulations were violated by the operation. There was no court search warrant for the hotel and no representative of the state prosecutor was present as required by Bolivian law. Even the police of Santa Cruz did not know of the operation, which was carried out by units that were flown in.
The Bolivian police seem to be investigating in a fairly half-hearted fashion. A week after the incident he only official result is the discovery of a few photos showing the three men in the company of other individuals “playing the guitar, having dinner and roasting meat”, as Julio Larrea, member of the Bolivian police’s task force said. The state prosecutor entrusted with the case, Marcelo Sosa told The Irish Times that the claim that the three men killed had planned to assassinate Bolivia’s left-wing populist president Evo Morales and his deputy Álvaro García Linera, so far is “only speculation” and there is no evidence of that. Hungary’s foreign minister Balázs on the basis of the results of investigations so far spoke of an “artificially created case”. Morales has warned of attempts on his life in the past, without being able to provide proof.
http://www.budapesttimes.hu/content/view/11793/27/
evo morales should be immediately treated for his paranoias, so no one else gets killed by him on false pretenses in bolivia, which is such a beautiful country, but who in their right mind would go there when people get massacred like this while sleeping in their beds...
he killed them for no reason. god, this is so horrible and idiotic...
IRONY ON
More photoshopped pictures by the bolivian police:
www.telesurtv.net/multimedia/imagenes/INF_NOTA22215_1083.jpg
Cool, these policemen are masters in photoshopping, I'd like to take lessons with them.
IRONY OFF
More "photoshopped" pics:
www.abi.bo/index.php?i=fotografias_completa&j=200904300055
www.abi.bo/index.php?i=fotografias_completa&j=200904300056
www.abi.bo/index.php?i=fotografias_completa&j=200904300057
i don't remember saying that the photos were photoshopped by policemen....
after the release of some of the photos some journalists stated that they could have been photoshopped... (and since some of them at least appear on the victims' blogs or facebook accounts months prior to morales murderous raid, it would have been highly unlikely it was the policemen who photoshopped (at least some of) them).
these photographs look like they were having fun and posing with the weapons. now i'm sure if you were about to kill your neighbour, let alone the president of the state you were staying in, you would also be posing with such weapons and then put these photos on the internet for everyone, including the bolivian police and secret service, to see... nevertheless, they are not evidence of an existence of an assassination plot against morales.
and again: possession of illegal weapons (or anything else for that matter) is not punishable by extra-judicial executions, torture or ill-treatment. i'm actually much more interested into an irony twist on this subject.
and also an irony on how morales has actually had evidence of a plot against him all along, but is just making fun by witholding them from the public for weeks, would also be much more fun.
Ok, I could accept that maybe there was no plot to kill Morales (or nor specifically or only Morales, apart from the video which of course you don't accept as proof), maybe the police used much more force than needed. I'm no saying those are facts, but they could be true.
Would you admit that Tóásó, Rózsa, and friends did not travel to Bolivia just to pose with guns in five stars hotels? In fact, one of the UJC guys yesterday told the press that Rozsa wanted to kill opposition leader Ruben Costas to create chaos in the country.
I kno, I kno, you'll say this guy told this because he was tortured and blah blah blah. But he did not mention any plot against Morales. If he is saying what he was told, why no confirm the official version?
But I feel you won't admit anything different of repeating to yourself "they were doing tourism and police killed them with no reason, they were doing tourism and police killed them with no reason, they were doing tourism and police killed them with no reason, they were doing tourism and police killed them with no reason" over and over and over.
i never said they were doing tourism. why would you want to invent things i supposedly said or would be saying? and in so many words?
rozsa said on the tape he was there to organize a militia to defend SC. obviously he didn't go there as a tourist.
i just want an investigation into how they were killed, since it looks like execution and torture, which are never justified grave violations of human rights, and those found responsible to be brought to justice...
i doubt the story about ruben costas at present time though (i doubt it was them who were the worst guys around), but hopefully we'll see how much truth and real evidence will come out of the investigation.
of course anything extracted under torture has no validity in any respectable court of law because people under torture will tell you whatever you want them to.
and contrary to what you might think, i am sincerely interested in what really happened, (what they were really doing there, if they themselves had been responsible for any human rights violations or were planning to commit some), but also i want to know what really happened on the 16th of april in that hotel where 3 people seem to have been extrajudicially-executed and possibly tortured.
doesn't make sense that they "wanted to kill ruben costas" and now to accuse costas of giving them support. i don't believe they wanted to kill either morales or opposition leaders in SC. i think morales killed them to get at the opposition by other than democratic means. i think he also killed them deliberately, so they could not tell their side of the story. it was triple murder for political gains and now, to add insult to injury, baseless slanders.
i just wish they hadn't gone there in the first place... they ended up used by rotten politicians on both sides. politicians are the real criminals; these guys were victims of their own naivete and politicians' greed, corruption and ruthlessness.
It DOES make sense. Rozsa wanted to start a war, and Costas didn't. That's why Rozsa said "Costas is better as a martyr because as governor he is useless".
If they wanted to kill them "so they could not tell their side of the story" they would have killed them all, wouldn't they? What about Tadić and Tóásó then?
So you don't say they were doing tourism, right... What else then, with tons of guns and ammunition, being paid 5 star hotels for half a year, waiting for a civil war to start? How long would they wait? How long they would be paid and trained for? A year? A decade? You tell me.
this is ridiculous. rozsa-flores (one not so influential and with no big material interests in the region approaching 50 individual) comes from hungary (where he lived peacefully for years if not decades) at the invitation of someone in bolivia who tells him how santa cruz needs to defend itself. and then all of a sudden he is not happy that santa cruz supposedly does not need to defend itself but can obtain autonomy through peaceful means and wants to create a war that does not exist.
looks like if it wasn't for flores, there would be no problems in bolivia or santa cruz.
they were killed precisely so that what they were doing there won't be explained, but will be used by morales government to get a stronger grip on santa cruz. now the other two guys will say whatever it takes to make a deal and get out of there as soon as possible.
i haven't seen tons of guns. i saw several guns (some say some are old, some say they are not necessarily real guns, some pictures (at least one) could have been photoshopped - i don't know. what i do know is that we really need an impartial and thorough international investigation to determine what really happened and how these guys were killed - i haven't heard of anyone else being killed or tortured, including morales, so i'm primarily interested in these 3 deaths or murders, as well as ill-treatment of prisoners and/or witnesses)
i saw photos of young guys impressed by holding guns, as if that was the first time ever they saw or held them. if they were experienced "terrorists" or soldiers they would not pose with the guns (certainly not like they do in those photos) as the guns would be their usual and every day tools they'd be totally used to. and if they'd be intent on killing any of the political figures in bolivia they would also not pose with the guns and publish such photos on the internet.
btw - how are the laws regarding weapons' possession in bolivia? some people say the laws in americas are quite different regarding weapons from the laws we have in europe... (i did actually see a documentary some time ago about a guy who has a tank at home in US, i know there's a lot of guns out on the streets of brazil, but i don't know anything about bolivia?)
Ok, some european history for you: there were problems in eastern Europe in the beginning of XXth century. But what made a war start? That Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Tha war did not start only for that shooting, but without that assasination, maybe the war wouldn´t have started then, or even it would never have started. Do you know what I mean? I'm not comparing Morales with Franz Ferdinand or Rozsa with Princip, but it is an example of how to start a war or civil war. It's the spark that stars the fire: you need wood (the situation in Santa Cruz), a spark (violence no matter against which side) and then you get the fire (civil war).
You don't want to admit that it is highly suspicious (to say the least) that a bunch of foreigners are being paid 5 star hotels and given weapons and military training for half a year (probably more) with no reason but a vaguely "I'm going there just in case" confession recorded in september. You admit you don't know the situation in Bolivia. Well, I do, I've been there twice, one of them doing journalism work.
A war is not likely to start, but it could be if what Rozsa apparently tried to do was successfull. One bomb here, one shooting there and Bang! A war would start!
Tell me that if a bunch of bolivians, cubans and venezuelans go to Hungary secretely and are paid to stay in 5 star hotels, do military training, have a lot of weapons, you find that perfectally normal, and then I'll understand your point of view.
Otherwise, I'll think you're are arguing for nationality reasons, and you will never admit that some hungarians can do wrong things.
wars are always started for economic reasons and not by accidental events which might serve as excuses, but never are the real reasons for wars. the war would have or would not have started with or without that assassination or bomb attacks. and so it will be. bigger stakes than what you say eduardo rozsa-flores supposedly wanted are always at stake.
i do not believe it was eduardo rozsa-flores who wanted to start a war in bolivia. i do not believe he was a terrorist nor an assassin. he was a soldier, not a war criminal. people who know him in person from all walks of life admire and love him. they have only nice things to say about him, which makes the attemps by bolivian authorities to demonize him really disgusting and laughable.
i do not believe rozsa-flores is responsible for violence or bomb attacks in bolivia or santa cruz, since witnesses, facts and pure logic strongly contradict bolivian authorities versions of events. what's more, the bolivian authorities seem to desperately seek to attribute any wrongdoings to rozsa-flores, quite possibly because they actually have nothing to accuse him of. which might also be a reason they chose to murder, rather than arrest him.
we do not know what exactly they were doing there and how the situation was developping. unfortunately i fear we will never know, because the aim of the "investigation" is not to find out the truth, but to gain power.
how can you justify 3 murders by pure and baseless speculations that have no support in fact or evidence? what if this and what if that? blahblahblah... there is no evidence that flores wanted to do or did any of the things you speculate here about.
i do not believe people in hungary are allowed to possess some of the weapons shown in the pictures, as such are probably the laws in hungary. how are the laws regarding weapons in bolivia? what i do know is that police in hungary would not extrajudicially execute people or torture and illtreat them without later being investigated and punished for such crimes. minister of interior (or whoever) would never order execution of suspects while violating the legal procedure.
furthermore, the investigation and punishment of those who ordered and are responsible for what happened in that hotel is in the best interest of bolivian people themselves who deserve better people to govern them than people ordering or condoning extrajudicial executions and torture.
also, i am not a hungarian and do not live in hungary. neither am i a nationalist, quite to the contrary.
everyone can clearly see that bolivian authorities' "investigation" is really a farce, violating basic human rights of arrestees and witnesses and suspects. there was no plot to assassinate anyone, just power struggle between morales and the opposition in bolivia. and the biggest tragedy so far is that those 3 people cannot be brought back to life. ever.
wars and violence as means to "solve problems" and sort out differences are logically always desired and instigated by the stronger side. the weaker side usually wants peaceful settlement, but possibly without giving up what it believes are its rights. the stronger side gets what it wants through force. that's basic logic.
so, which is currently the stronger side in bolivia? are they getting what they wanted? what could santa cruz and other eastern provinces possibly get (considering they're the minority and probably poorly armed) by starting or causing a civil war? don't you think it is logical for them to want autonomy through peaceful means? are they getting it? do you think it is necessary for santa cruz to provoke civil war and that just declaring autonomy wouldn't be enough for morales to run them over?
Ok, Rozsa was a hero armed and paid by strangers to do something undetermined in a country he left 40 years ago, Morales is a evil dictator chosen by his people in elections approved by international standards.
I see you point. Enough for me.
Investigate a little about the "weaker side" (who killed 20 peasants on september 11 2008) and the "stronger" side (the dead peasants). You have no idea on what is going in Bolivia but all your blahblahblah is to defend Rozsa. Who was armed and paid (like mercenaries do) but he was soooooooooo nice and soooooo cool.
I wish Rozsa was alive to tell the truth. That I agree with you. We will know then that he was not hero on the side of the weakest, but a schizofrenic with no clear ideas (from comunism to fascism, to atheism to Opus Dei then to Islam) and with one only true passion and amusement: firing guns. Nice guy, really. It's your hero. Keep it. Enjoy it.
how do you know he was "armed and paid by strangers"? again, let me remind you that flores was a bolivian from santa cruz. it was his homeland and this is why he went there. he is described as a good and honest person who could not stand injustice by people who really knew him and spent time with him.
but you, who have never met him, like the rest of silly armchair commentators and journalists, will now give psychological diagnosis of him. are you, as a pro-morales no matter what journalist, qualified to do that too? and just because someone plays with oxymorons in public and on the internet, it makes him a perfect target to kill because people will think he was schizofrenic? this is exactly what morales (or his men responsible for these executions) thought when they chose to murder him and use this for their political show and power struggle.
he was not a mercenary. if he was he wouldn't have had to wait for years for shit to start happening in his homeland in bolivia. he could have just gone to any of the conflict zones around the world, which unfortunately abound and just kill people "for fun" or for the sake of firing guns, which btw was not his "one only true passion", but you make baseless and false villifying accusations like morales' government all the time, so no surprise there.
mercenaries don't get heart attacks because of conflicts they later choose to get involved in. and mercenaries don't cry every year over lost brothers in arms.
and "terrorists" (under "state surveillance") don't blow up cardinal's house the night before and then go back to sleep in the same town on the 4th floor of a hotel (where they've been staying for the past 2 days) where they can't escape from. this is all just such bullsh*it it's unbelievable...
re - the murdered peasants incident (i'm not sure if your date is correct, but i read about this incident, in pando, was it?)... ah, yes, here it is:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/09/16/bolivia-investigate-killings-pando
- however, one incident does not determine who is stronger or weaker side. individual crimes are always committed on all sides. i read about this incident and i also read about another incident involving morales supporters on AI or HRW site or somewhere, but now i can't find either... i wish there were more information about human rights situation in bolivia.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/bolivia/report-2008
http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/bolivia
http://www.hrw.org/americas/bolivia
anyway, if someone wants to shoot morales, there's absolutely no logic in importing the highly inexperienced non-native speaker "assassins" from europe who publish and document they stay in bolivia extensively on the internet. and also the allegation of ruben costas financing assassination attempt on his own life is really hillarious
"schizofrenic with no clear ideas" - i've never thought he was schizofrenic. i do not believe he was a fascist either. i read an article or an interview with him from 2002 and already then he was playing with oxymorons. it was deliberate, i thought later it was a part of the character he was trying to create of himself in public... (now i think perhaps he was trying to recruit willing right-wingers for santa cruz militia)
i also read he said a person at the spanish newspaper he was working for when he arrived in croatia was in opus dei, but not flores himself... i might be wrong, but in that interview (from 2002 and while he was alive) he denied allegations some journalists or commentators made against or about him (one of which was allegedly that he himself was prosecuted for drug trafficking and then shot dead.) if there were any evidence to their claims he would have been prosecuted, especially in view of the fact that he lived in EU and was not an influential and rich man in some lawless dictatorship state. but he was never charged nor prosecuted for anything. and some of these wild allegations were just plain and obviuos inventions.
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