Debray's Public Trial Delayed as Vigilance Abroad Intensifies

from Russ Stetler, The trial of Regis Debray, which had already been protracted in a dual effort to provide a semblance of carefully administered juridical procedure and to wear out Debray's supporters (including the numerous foreign journalists now lodged in the deathly-dull oil town of Camiri), has been postponed. The public part of the trial is now expected until September 8 or 9. Four investigators who had been despatched to Bolivia by Bertrand Russell to gather evidence on the trial returned last week. Their dramatic reports have already appeared in The Observer (by Perry Anderson and Robin Blackburn) and in The New Statesman (by Tarig Ali). Their importint evidence not only demonstrates Debray's innocence (establishing conclusively that Debray entered Bolivia legally as an accredited journzlist in peacetime, that he was unarmed at the time of his arrest, etc.), but it also confirms Debray's counter-charges in many cases. Debray's contention that he has been interrogated by CIA officers from the U.S. is supported by a suspicious list of U.§. ‘military men' who arrived in the obscure town of Camiri immediately after Debray's arrest. The mames of these men, obtained from hotel registers in Camiri, are given in The Observer. A recent release from Agence France Press indicates that the Bolivian authorities have permitted the Anglo-Chilean journalist George Andrew Roth to return to Chile. Roth, who was accidentally captured with Debray, was held incommunicado for six weeks and subjected to the same brutal treatment as his co-defendants. Later 'released', he was denied permission to leave La Paz, in a crude psychological game which menaced him constatlywith re-indictment and offered him unconditional freedom if he would testify against Debray. It is to Roth 's credit that he withstood this great pressure. His final release also indicates that the Bolivian authorities could no longer afford to carry out threats against Roth, in the presence of foreign journalists whose sympathy for him is universal. Clearly, the Bolivien authorities feared what Roth would tell the journalists and even his possible testimony at Debray's trial. In a related development, Richard Wigg of The Times (25 August) gave a penetrating account of the industriel crisis with which Bolivia is currently faced vis-a-vis tin. Wigg writes, 'From the consuming world's viewpoint the 24,900 tons of Bolivian tin exported last year came from high cost and low productivity mines -- and Malaysia was first anyway, exporting 68,900 tons. But to Bolivians that tonnage represented 70% of alltheir country's exports and tin, together with other less important minerals, accounted for 9% of Bolivia's total foreign exchange earnings.' He adds that the price of tin has fallen from a 1965, high of $1.76 per fine pound, to $1.50; next year, it will be worse, since world supply will exceed demand. The mines are under military occupation, and in June 24 Government troops massacred more tham two dozen miners(with their wives and children). Those wounded are said to numberover one hundred. Wigg's description of life in the pits could be taken «rom The Road _to Wigan Pier -- but for the fact that high altitude sharpens — the contrasts of temperature and light for the Bolivian miners. It. is on this base that the Bolivian guerrilla army is built.