Mr. Forrest Hylton
Bolivia

Dear Mr. Hylton 

I read with concern your article published in ZNet-Bolivia (1) where you denounce possible fraud that was committed by Evo Morales and his counterpart in relation to sums of money that I had sent to support the legal defense of our common friend Pacho Cortes.

These grave accusations are totally false.  No one ended up with any money, simply because we have not yet sent any sum of money to anyone in relation to this case.  In a meeting that occurred in La Paz, I said that I was planning to propose to a parliamentary group of the United Left in the European Parliament that these costs be assumed.  But when I made this proposal upon my return to Europe, they clarified to me that the accounting rules of the European Union that control the use of funds for European political groups would not allow such a transfer of funds, so we had to look for other possibilities, none of which have come to fruition.  For this reason, in your article you have committed serious defamations against Evo Morales, among other serious accusations against him and other social movement activists, which probably come from the same sources.

For this reason I demand that you rectify this information and that you publicly apologize to the people whose honor you have questioned.  These rectifications and apologies should be more serious than the one that you laughingly provided at the beginning of the article to the two friends of Pacho Cortes who you also gravely defamed in a previous ZNet article (2), where you speculated that they had turned states’ evidence against Pacho Cortes in exchange for their freedom, when the truth was the exact opposite, these people resisted the pressures even though it cost them their freedom.
 
I believe these defamatory, hate-filled articles against popular political left leaders contribute very little to the cause you claim to defend.  If you plan to continue publishing, perhaps you should think more about the responsibility of the US Embassy and the multinationals in imprisoning and assassinating popular leaders.

Sincerely,

Pedro Marset Campos
Member of European Parliament
Brussels

(1) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5703

(2) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=5524

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