MIAMI, (Reuters) – A former top Bolivian anti-drug official pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States in a case that has proved a major embarrassment for Bolivia’s President Evo Morales.
Retired General Rene Sanabria is a former head of Bolivia’s leading counternarcotics unit. The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami said he was director of an anti-drugs intelligence unit attached to Bolivia’s Interior Ministry when he was arrested in February in Panama and deported to Miami.
He had faced a life sentence if found guilty in a trial. Sentencing was set for September 2.
