A bloody chapter in Bolivia's history ended Wednesday with the transfer of former dictator Luis Garcia Meza from a prison in Brazil to one in Bolivia where he began serving a 30-year term.
Garcia Meza was met by hundreds of heavily armed police at La Paz airport and taken to the Chonchocoro high security jail 30 miles away."I'm innocent," he said as he boarded a Bolivian jet Tuesday night at an air force base in Brasilia, Brazil.
Garcia Meza, a fugitive since 1989, was arrested in Brazil a year ago. Brazil's Supreme Court ordered his extradition on Oct. 19, but his lawyers delayed it.
Garcia Meza, 64, headed the 1980 military coup that overthrew a democratically elected government, dissolved Congress and outlawed political parties.
He staged the coup with the backing of cocaine traffickers, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and foreign mercenaries.