Since the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo arrested Monsignor José Leonardo Urbina, on July 13, and presented him “as guilty” before the official media, he “was already convicted.” In addition, “it was the first case in this country in which he was not even allowed to have a legitimate defense,” says lawyer Francisco Omar Gutiérrez, who was appointed by his family as his defender, but was never authorized by the Ortega dictatorship, which even banished him from the country.
The family of the parish priest of Boaco repeatedly requested that a private lawyer be admitted. However, Judge Edén Aguilar, head of the Third District Court Specialized in Violence in Managua, ignored all the petitions.
Initially, he had Harry Valle Palacios as his defense attorney, a well-known Ortega militant who displayed photographs on his social networks of activities in support of the regime. But he resigned on July 21, after being exposed as a Sandinista fanatic, although he alleged “discrepancies” with the religious’s relatives and that they also did not have the financial capacity to pay for legal services.
The next day, a niece of the priest requested in writing that another private defender be appointed. However, in less than an hour, public defender Jennifer Elieth Hernández filed a brief requesting legal intervention to represent the accused.
“Something unheard of. That they are offering to represent an accused person, ”questions lawyer Gutiérrez.
An announced conviction
Monsignor José Leonardo Urbina, 51, and pastor of the Perpetuo Socorro church in Boaco, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the alleged crimes of sexual abuse and rape against a 14-year-old girl.
The sentence was imposed by Ortega judge Edén Aguilar Castro, who found him guilty on August 26, in a secret trial that lasted two days.
“Monsignor Urbina never had any type of defense because it is evident that the Public Defender’s Office is in collusion with the Prosecutor’s Office, with the judge and with the Police. Everything is a single apparatus of administration of injustice”, criticizes the lawyer Gutiérrez.
He points out that the Ortega regime “has a monopoly on criminal action” and therefore “they decide who is innocent or guilty.”
“Only in Nicaragua do they accuse and defend at the same time. I insist that it is something unheard of and a sign that they are tied and the case of Monsignor Urbina shows that they had already decided in advance that he would be sentenced, but they did not even allow him to defend himself against the accusations, ”he explains.
For this jurist, also from Boaco, the entire trial is riddled with anomalies. His denunciation of the case cost him his homeland: in mid-September, the regime did not allow him to return to the country after a family trip to the United States.
“There were so many witnesses who could give a version of the events that they denounced to the priest, so many cameras in the places that they say he visited. In addition, his defense only refuted the evidence, but he did nothing, “he criticized.
Also, he stressed that the defender is from Managua and does not even know the land, nor the people of Boaco. “It is clearly evident that they did nothing, other than being silent accomplices in an unfair trial,” said the jurist.
Defender was a judge’s assistant
The former judicial official, Yader Morazán, an expert in the administration of justice, denounced that the public defender Jennifer Elieth Hernández “was the trusted assistant of Judge Edén Aguilar”, who sentenced Monsignor Urbina. From there, he maintains, the annulment should have been declared, because “it causes a disciplinary complaint and annulment of the process for not inhibiting itself.”
“The confidence of that position is such that not even superiors can impose the judge on the assistant in charge, it is an exclusive decision of the judge. It is a position of great trust, because the assistants have early access to the decisions that the judge will make. Some assistants even come to influence the decisions of the judges, and change the course of what is decided by the judge. In some cases, the judge’s superiors sometimes prefer to deal with the assistant, who may have more skills in managing the judicial office,” he commented.
Morazán believes that the defender kept silent “maliciously” by not recusing the judge as established in article 32, number seven of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPP) which establishes that one of the reasons for the inhibition and recusal of a case is: “When they have a friendship that is manifested by great familiarity or frequency of dealings with any of the parties or interveners.”
In addition, he cited article 38 of the Law on the Judicial Career (Law 501), which states: “In cases of implication or recusal, career officials
Court have the obligation to separate immediately from the processing
and knowledge of the cause. If they do not separate immediately, their behavior will be sufficient reason to open a disciplinary process.”
Morazán assessed that the defender “could be committing the crime of unfaithful sponsorship, which is procedural fraud with the purpose of deliberately harming the interests of her client” established in article 466 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The article indicates that: “The lawyer who deliberately harms the interests that have been entrusted to him, will be sentenced to three hundred to six hundred days fine and special disqualification from two to six years.”
“There was never a right to defense”
The Ortega justice also scheduled for December 1st the oral and public trial against three priests, a deacon, two seminarians and a cameraman who were surrounded together with Monsignor Rolando José Álvarez, in the Episcopal Curia of Matagalpa for 15 days, last August. .
The religious are: Ramiro Tijerino Chávez, General Rector of the John Paul II University; José Luis Díaz Cruz, vicar of the Cathedral and his predecessor Sadiel Antonio Eugarrios Cano; Deacon Raúl Antonio Vega; the seminarians Darvin Leiva Mendoza and Melkin Centeno and the layman Sergio Cadena Flores. All are charged with alleged “conspiracy to undermine national integrity” and “spreading false news.”
Judge Nalia Nadezdha Úbeda Obando, of the Fifth Criminal Hearing District of Managua, is in charge of the case, which has been handled with total secrecy. In the last hearing, however, they had private defense, contrary to the preliminary one when public defenders were imposed on them.
For the lawyer Francisco Omar Gutiérrez, although it is clear that these are political trials against members of the Catholic Church, “in thirty years of practice, Monsignor Urbina’s case is the first time that I see that a person who is prosecuted is not allowed the lawyer of your choice.
“The judge never answered anything. They tried him and convicted him, we even filed an appeal, but they never granted me legal intervention”, he claimed.
“The monsignor’s case has been treated very viciously. They imposed a public defender on him, the State denounces him, that is, the Sandinista Front party denounces him to Monsignor, because in the first hearing councilors from the Sandinista Front came to the hearing, the Sandinista Police investigate him, the Sandinista Prosecutor’s Office accuses him, the The Sandinista Public Defender defends him and the Sandinista judge judges him, that is, all the stages of the judicial process, from the investigation to the conviction, there was no right to defense,” he explained.
However, other defense attorneys for political prisoners have denounced that they are subjected to invasive searches, stripped of documentary evidence, photographed and blocked in their exercise of law.
“They don’t let us speak, they cut off our interventions. Perhaps, we are basing what we are saying and we are doing it on a legal basis: articles, doctrine, jurisprudence, and they cut us off. No, already, already, enough (the court tells them) ”, related the defender ‘Raúl’, who for security reasons asked that his identity be protected, in a Report published by CONFIDENCIAL.
A relative of Monsignor Urbina, who requested anonymity for security reasons, indicated that it was evident throughout the process in which they were not allowed to participate “that no one was doing anything to prove his innocence.”
So much so that on the day of the sentence, Dr. Clarissa Ibarra Rivera, director of the Public Defender’s Office, approached her relatives and told them: “it’s unfortunate, but you never get to know people and they didn’t know what you were up to.” ”, referring to the guilt of Monsignor Urbina.
“If the same person who leads the team that supposedly defends him blamed him to our face, what can we expect from a justice system controlled by them?” the relative questioned.
“They are a mafia”
The former judicial official, Yader Morazán, explains that the mission of the Public Defender’s Office is to be an institution that must represent people with limited economic resources or in conditions of vulnerability.
However, he questioned that since 2018 it is “used to validate clandestine hearings and to exclude real defenses.”
“This pattern that has been reproduced from the political processes initiated in the pre-electoral context of 2021, could not be possible without collusion between the presiding magistrate of the TAM (Managua Court of Appeals) Ernesto Rodríguez, and the director of the Ombudsman Public, Clarissa Ibarra ”, he assured.
Morazán assures that Judge Rodríguez asks Ibarra to assign “missions to trusted defenders for cases that will be held clandestinely, choosing the most adept”, and sentences: “they operate like mafias”.
