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BOLIVIA

Spain ‘would apologize’ to Bolivian president

Spain's Minister for Foreign Affairs, José Manuel García-Margallo, said on Tuesday he has no objection to apologizing to Bolivia "if there has been any misunderstanding" over last week's incident which saw Bolivian President Evo Morales's jet refused permission to fly over a number of European countries.

Spain 'would apologize' to Bolivian president
Spain's Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo insists that Spain did nothing wrong but would apologize for any misunderstanding. Photo: Daniel Mihailescu/AFP

Margallo insisted that Spain had not closed its airspace to Morales as he travelled from Moscow, Russia, to La Paz, Bolivia, nor endangered his life.

The Bolivian president's plane was eventually forced to land in Vienna, Austria, where it was detained for 13 hours.

The incident was the result of a rumour that fugitive American 'IT Spy' Edward Snowden was also travelling on board, according to Spanish daily El País.

Snowden is currently holed up at Moscow airport seeking to avoid US espionage charges after leaking embarrassing details of a vast US phone and Internet surveillance programme.

Morales had been in Russia at an energy conference and was returning home to Bolivia when his flight was diverted to Austria.

Margallo said, "if there has been any misunderstanding then naturally we will say that we are sorry."

The foreign minister's words represent a step back from Spain's stance at last week's Union of South American Nations meeting when Margallo declared that the country had nothing to apologize for.

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BOLIVIA

Spanish children rescued from Bolivian drug lords

Bolivian and Spanish police have rescued a three-month-old baby and his 11-year-old brother from a group of drug traffickers who held them in a bid to extort money from their mother.

Spanish children rescued from Bolivian drug lords
After a week of captivity, police located the children and arrested their four captors. File Photo: Aizar Raldes/AFP

The children’s mother, a Spanish national living in the Latin American country, was arrested prior to their kidnapping when she was trying to sell a kilo of cocaine in her home region of Murcia.

According to Spanish daily El Mundo, she had already made €16,000 from drug sales.

The kidnappers, thought to be local drug traffickers, took the two children from a family they were staying with in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz as a way of guaranteeing they would be fully reimbursed for the drugs after the mother’s arrest.

The woman’s partner, also a local drug dealer, allowed the captors to take the newborn and his brother.

A Spanish National Police team specializing in kidnappings and extortion travelled to Bolivia to help local authorities with the investigation.

Another monitored the mother’s entourage telephone activity from Spain to monitor communication between both sides.

According to the biological father of the 11-year-old boy, an Ecuadorian resident in Spain, dozens of phone calls from Bolivia were made to him by the captors, demanding that the money be paid back.

After a week of captivity, police located the children and arrested their four captors.

Earlier in March, the story of a Barcelona girl who was held captive by a friend of her parents in the depths of the Amazon made international headlines.

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