Ms Caroline Dwyer:

I thank the Chairman for the introduction. I thank members for giving me the opportunity to make this presentation today. I am accompanied by Ms Catherine Heaney, as the Chairman mentioned, who has supported me in navigating the advocacy infrastructures we have engaged in with this case.

I would like to start by reminding the members about my son. Michael came into the lives of myself and my husband on 15 June 1984. He was the eldest of our four children and was brought up in a small, close-knit community in Ballinderry, north Tipperary.

Before he left for Bolivia in 2008, Michael graduated with an honours degree in construction management and took up a short-term contract in site security. That job ended. At the time, Ireland was in a deep recession and there were no jobs in construction for a young graduate. He left Ireland to undertake a security course in Bolivia. I helped him organise his travel. There was no hidden agenda. He used his own passport during his travels and kept in contact with me. He told me about his girlfriend, a Brazilian medical student. He sent me copies of his curriculum vitae, CV, so that I could help him obtain a job here in Ireland.

Michael was a loving son, a caring brother and a great friend. He loved life. He was full of fun, and he loved to socialise. Our home has been quiet for almost eight years. The laughter he brought has been silenced in our house. I knew my son. He had no ulterior motives. We are not a political family, and Michael was not political. He would have had no interest in or knowledge of Bolivian politics, and he did not speak Spanish.

Michael was killed by the Bolivian special police force, UTARC, at the Hotel Las Americas on 16April 2009 in an operation that President Morales claimed immediately afterwards through the media he had ordered. The initial evidence supplied to the Irish Government by the Bolivian authorities did not stack up. That was the opinion of the Irish Government, which immediately called for an independent international investigation.

The Bolivian authorities claimed in flagrante delictoas the justification for not complying with the normal criteria for a raid on a private building in the early hours of the morning. To support this claim, Bolivian officials stated that there was a street chase from the centre of Santa Cruz to the Hotel Las Americas and that there was a 30 minute shoot-out in which Michael was killed.

When Michael’s body was repatriated to Ireland, it was examined by the State pathologist, Dr. Marie Cassidy. She also examined the photographic and other information that was made available by the Bolivian authorities. Her analysis concluded that Michael could not have been engaged in a shoot-out. The bullet when straight through his heart and damaged his lung. When he lay dead or dying, he was shot four more times in the back. He was in bed wearing nothing but his underwear. There is no doubt that Michael was summarily executed.

The Irish Government, the European Union, through the offices of the European External Action Service, EEAS, and our family have every confidence in the report presented by Dr. Cassidy. That is why we are united in our call for an independent, international and transparent investigation into the killing of Michael.

I would like to put on record that I have hugely valued the support of successive Irish Governments, in particular that of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Charlie Flanagan, the former Minister, Deputy Micheál Martin, the former Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, Deputy Alan Kelly, who is present, the European External Action Service and the European Parliament, especially the former Irish delegation of MEPs who have not given up in their questioning and support for Michael’s case.

Since the day of Michael’s death, my family’s objective has been to establish the truth. Large elements of the media – in Ireland and internationally – sullied his name. The information and the photographs released by the Bolivian authorities were not questioned.

In the immediate aftermath of the executions of Michael and two others in the Hotel Las Americas, and in which two more were arrested, the Bolivian authorities used this event to arrest 37 local businessmen and opposition figures in Santa Cruz. Almost eight years later, the trial of those men continues in the kangaroo court of Santa Cruz. While four of them opted for an abbreviated process in 2015 and took a plea bargain for lesser charges in return for a sentence of time already spent in prison, that plea was essentially a plea for freedom. The ongoing trial is the excuse that we are given for the Bolivian authorities not commencing the investigating into the execution of Michael.

Michael is not part of that trial. He does not get an opportunity to defend himself. It is absolutely unjust that my family cannot get the truth put on record in Bolivia and have those responsible held accountable for Michael’s execution.

Over the past eight years, we travelled over and back to the European Parliament to mobilise support for our call for an international investigation into Michael’s killing. We travelled to Geneva to submit our case to the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions who, on review, deemed that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that this was an extra-judicial killing and subsequently issued letters of allegation to the Bolivian authorities, the highest level of complaint from the office of the UN.

In 2012, we submitted a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights specifically on the violation of Article 4, the right to life. In recent months, Michael’s case entered into the first of three phases en routeto the inter-American court.

In June 2014, we learned that Marcelo Soza, the chief prosecutor in the trial of the 37 accused in Santa Cruz, had fled from Bolivia to Brazil as he had failed to deliver the sentencing of the accused and was now under persecution himself. We travelled to Brazil to interview him. He provided a witness statement to us confirming that there was no legal basis or authorisation for the police raid on the Hotel Las Americas, that as the first official present to gather evidence at the scene he found Michael was unarmed, that there was no evidence of a shoot-out and that, during the five years of his investigations, he found no evidence implicating Michael in any unlawful activity in his time in Bolivia.

Later in 2014, Catherine Heaney, my eldest daughter Aisling, who is here with me, and I travelled to Bolivia to see how we could further piece together Michael’s case. That visit was also a deeply personal one. We visited the room in which Michael’s dead body had lain. I felt that the person who killed him was just centimeters away, both in my mind and physically, when Michael was killed. The room was so small, there was no room for a shoot-out. We saw the city in which he spent the last days of his young life. It was an upsetting time for us, but it was important for us to make that connection.

During that visit we met with the hotel manager who was the first witness to see the lifeless bloodied bodies lying in the bedrooms. His evidence is crucial. There were no guns lying near those who were dead, and no evidence of any crossfire. All the bullet damage came from one direction - the police. He recounted how the heavily armed police had threatened the night porter at gun point, demanded that the hotel front doors were unlocked, disconnected the CCTV cameras and, having confirmed the room numbers of their targets, quietly made their way to the fourth floor of the hotel. There was an explosion followed by short bursts of gunfire, and it was all over. Three people lay dead in their bedrooms. Later, we heard from another witness, a guest at the hotel, who said that after hearing the explosion they heard pleas for life, shots and then silence.

Also during this visit in 2014, supported by the offices of the EU and the Irish Government, we travelled to La Paz and met with representatives of the Bolivian Government. Our objective was to present to them our family’s complaint about the ex-judicial execution of our son and to personally call upon them to accept our request for an independent, international investigation. As recently as last night, the response from the Bolivian Government was sent to us. It was its response to the Inter-American Commission. One point it made in that response was that the family had not made a complaint about Michael's killing. It is a point we might discuss after the presentation but I only got this information last night. That type of response is what we have faced over the past eight years. We went to Bolivia twice to make an official complaint and yet in a letter to the Inter-American Commission, they said they never received any complaint.

During our engagement, the representatives of the Bolivian Government expressed their condolences to us on the loss of our son. In response to our call for an independent, international investigation, they indicated that other processes could only be considered once the ongoing trial in Santa Cruz was complete. In terms of an update on that trial, they are eight years into it. They are on witness 28 of 42, and they reckon the trial will take at least another three years. That same position was reiterated in November 2015 when my family met with the delegation of President Evo Morales during his visit to Ireland. At that meeting, we expressed our concern that evidence and recall relating to Michael’s killing is fading away, and that at least one of the key individuals involved in the raid on the hotel in Santa Cruz is now deceased. They offered my family a commitment that if we were to revisit Bolivia, we would be facilitated in meeting key Bolivian officials who were involved at the time of Michael’s killing.

After months of communications with the Bolivian authorities and an agreement to provide us with access to interview most of the list of 19 witnesses we identified, we made the long journey back to La Paz in July 2016. Hours after our arrival in La Paz, we were informed that the interviews with those key individuals were cancelled. After overnight interventions by the Irish Government, we were met by Bolivian deputy officials who eventually produced two individuals for us to interview. However, those individuals were apparently suffering a severe episode of amnesia and the response to each of my questions was frustratingly the same. They could not remember a thing of their evidence gathering of the current most high profile case ever to happen in Bolivia. Our journey was wasted, Bolivian promises broken, and the diplomatic process that I have so heavily invested in was severely fractured.

My recent encounters confirmed to me that I will struggle to ever get justice for Michael in Bolivia. We have assembled evidential documentation over the past eight years and keep a close eye on developments in Bolivia. We have submitted a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and while we received an initial commitment that our case would be fast-tracked through the system, it now appears stuck. Sometimes, it feels that we are running out of road in terms of clearing Michael’s name.

I ask members of this committee to consider ways of assisting to deliver some justice to my dear son, Michael. At a very basic level, I urge members to consider the reports and information we have gathered and for them to make their own assessment of Michael’s case. A report of this committee would be hugely important in supporting the concerns that the Irish and European Governments - in addition to my family - have been highlighting. Based on this work, I would be pleased if members could consider submitting an amicus curiae or letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights pointing out their observations and concerns.

I do not intend to hold back on my work in calling the Bolivian authorities to account for their actions. I call on the committee to consider any potential to visit Bolivia to examine the circumstances of Michael’s killing. Alternatively, in any personal visit by me, I would very much appreciate the potential of having a representative from this committee to join me as an observer. An immediate action from that could be an observer's report to this committee which could subsequently be used in my international advocacy. I want witness testimony on the facts surrounding Michael's killing put on official record at least in Ireland before it is too late.

Nothing can bring Michael back to us but we will not give up in our search for the true facts and justice. Michael was the victim of an extrajudicial killing. The manner of his killing was a flagrant abuse of the UN Convention on Human Rights, and in particular Article 4 on the right to life. His killing is a human rights issue. It is a loss that myself and my family find so difficult to cope with to this day. My son was an innocent victim. Ultimately, I want those responsible for executing Michael to be held accountable. I thank members for their time. I am happy to take any questions.