Businessmen and union leaders Michael Healy and Álvaro Vargas celebrate this Friday, October 21, one year after being taken as political prisoners by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Healy, at the time of his arrest, was serving as president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep) and Vargas was vice president of the employers’ association. Both were captured a year ago.
An Ortega court sentenced Michael Healy to 13 years in prison for “undermining national integrity” and Álvaro Vargas nine years in prison for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.” Judge Ángel Jeancarlos Fernández González, of the Fourth Criminal District Court of Managua, was the one who issued the sentences against the two business leaders.
Related news: Justice of Ortega declares guilty for “undermining” businessmen Michael Healy and Álvaro Vargas
The US State Department sanctioned Judge Fernández because he “undermines democratic processes or institutions when he convicted and sentenced pro-democracy leaders on trumped-up charges of “undermining national integrity” in sham trials” against political prisoners. This same judge also sentenced businessman Luis Rivas Anduray; opponents Dora María Téllez, José Antonio Peraza and Víctor Hugo Tinoco.
The businessmen are imprisoned in the cells of the Judicial Assistance Directorate (DAJ), known as “El Nuevo chipote”, a center where they receive cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, according to complaints from human rights organizations and relatives of the hostages of conscience. .
After ten months in prison, Healy was presented to the propaganda media of the dictatorship on September 30. In the released images he looks underweight and looks almost unrecognizable and with his face down. A day later Álvaro Vargas was presented, the political prisoner showed a noticeable weight loss.
The 27 political prisoners detained in the electoral context, who are in “El Chipote”, are subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as reported by their relatives and human rights organizations. The Mechanism for the Recognition of Political Prisoners updated the number of hostages of conscience to 219 as of September 2022. Most have been charged with crimes of treason under a set of repressive laws created to persecute the opposition.
