The United States has updated its Engel list this Wednesday, which now includes 60 new actors. Of them, 23 are judges and prosecutors from Nicaragua, but what is the reason why Washington singled out these individuals and prohibited them from entering the country?
After the 2021 general election, where Sandinista president Daniel Ortega prevailed for a new five-year term after imprisoning dozens of activists, opponents and presidential candidates, the prosecutors and judges added to the Engel list played an important role in “fabricating charges” against the opponents to later be “convicted” in “sham trials,” argues the State Department.
The incorporated prosecutors are ten. Yubelca Pérez Alvarado, Perla de los Ángeles Baca, Carlos Espinoza Castilla, Luis Alberto Mena Gámez, Jorge Luis Arias Jarquín, Martha Ileana Morales, María Pérez Mojica, Marling Castro Rodríguez, Andrea del Carmen Sallas and Auxiliadora Sequeira Suazo.
According to him document of the US Foreign Ministry, the prosecutors were in charge of “filing false charges to imprison opponents of the regime in the period prior to the national elections” in the year 2021.
The Nicaraguan judges included in the list are 13. According to the US government, they “convicted and sentenced pro-democracy leaders on vague and false charges.”
For example, Judge Luden Martín Quiroz García is accused of convicting opponents of the crime of “undermining national integrity.”
Luden condemned opposition leader Ana Margarita Vijil; the journalist Miguel Mendoza; to former Foreign Minister Mauricio Díaz, to the former presidential candidate Cristiana Chamorro, opponent Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, former employees of the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation (FVBCH) Pedro Vásquez, Walter Gómez and Marcos Fletes; and former deputy María Fernanda Flores.
Meanwhile, Judge Ángel Jancarlos Fernández González is accused of having convicted and sentenced “pro-democratic leaders and businessmen Luis Rivas, Michael Healy and Álvaro Vargas”; in addition to the former Sandinista leader Dora Maria Tellez; opposition leaders José Antonio Peraza and Víctor Hugo Tinoco.
While Judge Melvin Leopoldo Vargas is accused of having sentenced “with vague and false charges in the mock trial of the opposition activist Samantha Jirón”.
Judges Erick Laguna Averruz; Rosa Baca Cardoza; Irma Oralya Laguna Cruz; Nancy Aguirre Gudiel; William Howard Lopez; Veronica Fiallos Moncada; Felix Salmeron; Rolando Sanarrusia; Nadia Tardencilla and Ulisa Tapia.
In the case of Judge Félix Salmerón, the US indicates that it convicted and sentenced the leaders and former presidential candidates Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Félix Maradiaga, Arturo Cruz and Medardo Mairena; civic leaders Pedro Mena, José Pallais, Violeta Granera, Tamara Dávila, José Quintanilla Hernández, Roger Reyes; and business leader José Adán Aguerri.
Meanwhile, Judge Nadia Camila Tardencilla was added to the list for having condemned student leaders Lesther Alemán and Max Jerez in “the false trials”; former presidential candidate Miguel Mora; political analyst Edgar Parrales; the director of the newspaper La Prensa Juan Lorenzo Holmann and the electoral expert Harry Chavez.
Judges and prosecutors commit a crime
According to US diplomat Anthony Blinken, “the peoples of Central America deserve the opportunity to create a more democratic, prosperous and secure region.”
“Today, with the publication of the 2022 list of those who undermine democracy or commit acts of corruption, we support those who build a better future,” wrote Blinken on his Twitter account.
Meanwhile, the lawyer and former official of the Judiciary, Yader Morazán, stressed to the voice of america, via Skype, that the judges and prosecutors added to the Engel list acted outside the law and not only committed the crime of prevarication, “but also crimes in which they cooperate to facilitate or commit crimes against humanity in the form of torture.”
“If we analyze the common pattern of these people who have been singled out today, we see that they focus on all those judges who acted in this last phase of judicial repression,” Morazán said.
The Judicial Power of Nicaragua is accused of being controlled by President Daniel Ortega, something that the president has repeatedly denied, although after the arrests of opponents he said that they were condemning “not politicians, but criminals” who, according to him, they were trying to “destabilize” his government.
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