My meeting with the man accused of plotting the assassination of Evo Morales

[Judi Lynn]

My meeting with the man accused of plotting the assassination of Evo Morales

Eduardo Rozsa Flores was one of three members of an alleged assassination plot against Bolivia's left-wing president Evo Morales who were gunned down in a police raid on their hotel last week. Philip Sherwell met him in Croatia in 1991.

By Philip Sherwell
Last Updated: 11:06AM BST 20 Apr 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01387/EduardoRozsaFlores_1387374c.jpg

Eduardo Rozsa Flores Photo: EPA

encountered Eduardo Rozsa Flores in the killing fields of eastern Croatia on a bleak day just after Christmas 1991. The flamboyant part-Bolivian, part-Hungarian polyglot journalist-turned-fighter was one of those characters that flourished in the anarchy of that brutal war.

Flores had founded the Croatian army's grandly-named First International Platoon, a motley collection of nationalities, including a handful of Britons, fighting for the independence of the breakaway from the old Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

He was fast assuming the reputation of the Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness - except his fiefdom was the plains of the Balkans rather than the jungles of the Congo.

Different motives brought the volunteers here - love of adventure, obsession with killing, romantic attachment to an underdog, hatred of the Serbs, loathing of communism. Flores, a former Leftist journalist who swapped his keyboard for a rifle and Marxism for the far-Right after covering the early days of the conflict, seemed to be driven by them all.

Nearly two decades later, Flores was one of three members of an alleged assassination plot against Bolivia's left-wing president Evo Morales who were gunned down in their underwear in a police raid on their hotel rooms in the South American country on Thursday.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/bolivia/5185198/My-meeting-with-the-man-accused-of-plotting-the-assassination-of-Evo-Morales.html
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