LA PAZ, Bolivia — A Bolivian judge ordered the release of powerful opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho Tuesday, ending over two years of pretrial detention for the conservative politician. His impending release is a victory for his supporters, who long criticized his prosecution as politically motivated, and a blow for his detractors who see the judicial pendulum swinging to the right.

Camacho, the governor of Bolivia’s easternmost province of Santa Cruz, has served two years and eight months behind bars on charges of sedition tied to his involvement in violent unrest over the disputed 2019 reelection of socialist former President Evo Morales.

The firebrand Christian leader of a powerful Santa Cruz business association, Camacho gained prominence while leading protests against Morales in 2019 that ultimately forced Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader to resign under pressure from the military and flee to exile.

The court order for Camacho’s release comes after Bolivia’s Aug. 17 elections signaled the end of nearly 20 years of left-wing rule under Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS party. A presidential runoff in October pits centrist Senator Rodrigo Paz against right-wing former President Jorge Quiroga, assuring a rightward tilt in the country’s politics.

Quiroga in particular has called for the release of his jailed political allies, including Camacho as well as caretaker interim President Jeanine Añez, who took over the presidency in 2019 in what Morales’ supporters call a coup.

Both are divisive figures.

Although Añez vowed to steer Bolivia to new elections in which she wouldn’t run following her 2019 takeover, she swiftly cemented her hold on power, transforming the country’s policies, violently cracking down on protests and provoking Morales’ Indigenous supporters.

After elections in 2020 vaulted Morales’ handpicked successor, President Luis Arce, to the nation’s top job, the same judicial system that Añez wielded against Morales and his followers sentenced her to 10 years in prison on charges of sedition and terrorism stemming from her takeover.

In 2022, Camacho was arrested on the same charges while leading a prolonged economic strike against Arce’s government in Santa Cruz that shut down Bolivia’s most populous and economically vital region for 36 days.

He was accused with criminal association and illegal use of public property for leading the strike. But the main case that landed him in pretrial detention dates back to his pivotal role in pressuring Morales to quit the presidency in 2019. He called on all MAS lawmakers to resign and even proposed that an unconstitutional junta take power before ultimately backing Áñez’s government.

Unlike Áñez, Camacho was never tried or formally charged. Every time he maxed out the legal detention period, a prosecutor extended his jailing in a widely criticized tactic that Bolivia’s judiciary often deploys in high-profile political cases.

Now, with Bolivia’s right-wing opposition preparing to return to power for the first time in decades, the judiciary has taken note.

Last week, Bolivia’s Supreme Court issued a sudden ruling ordering all judges in the country to review the legality of pretrial detention in the cases of Añez and Camacho, along with that of Marco Antonio Pumari, another opposition leader held over his role in the 2019 political crisis.

On Tuesday, after more than 10 hours of deliberations, the judge granted Camacho house arrest with work-release privileges that allow him to resume his duties as governor of Santa Cruz, the powerhouse of Bolivian agriculture, within three days, said his lawyer, Martín Camacho.

Camacho will spend the night in jail Tuesday and has one more hearing Wednesday in which a judge is expected to approve his release, his lawyer said. As news broke of the judge’s order, crowds of Camacho’s supporters in central Santa Cruz erupted in cheers and chants of “Freedom!”

The court also ordered the unconditional release of Pumari, a former civic leader in Bolivia’s southern town of Potosí and Camacho’s running mate in the 2020 elections, who has been detained since 2021.

On Monday, a Bolivian court annulled the trial against Áñez over her involvement in the killing of dozens of protesters in 2019, ruling that she is entitled to a special judicial process for former heads of state handled by Congress, not an ordinary court. A separate hearing in the case was pushed to Friday.

Outside the courthouse in Bolivia’s capital of La Paz, protesters — incensed by the release of Camacho, who they consider indirectly responsible for the killing of 37 people following Morales’ 2019 ouster — chanted “Justice for the victims” and “Without justice there is no democracy.”

“Justice must be impartial, whoever must pay, must pay, but justice has to be done,” Gloria Quisbert, a representative of the victims, told local media. She described the annulment of Áñez’s trial as also giving the victims “new pain.”

“We will not tire, we will seek other paths,” she said.

Revelers — thrilled by the long-awaited release of the most prominent symbol of opposition to MAS rule — shouted “Freedom for Camacho” and tried to reach out to touch and take selfies with the governor as he emerged from the hearing in La Paz. Many of his supporters flew or took 16-hour bus rides from Santa Cruz to La Paz to greet him in person.

Security forces in riot gear struggled to contain the competing rallies.

“This is the first step towards freedom,” Camacho said after the court decision. “The elected representatives of justice today begin to restore the rule of law.”

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DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.