The pair of Nicaraguan dictators, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, together with a group of senior officials of their administration, were denounced for crimes against humanity before the National Criminal and Correctional Court number four of the Judicial Power of the Argentine Nation, based in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
This is the second complaint against the Managua regime and its entourage in the South American nation. On this occasion, the complaint was filed by the Inter-American Legal Assistance Center for Human Rights (CALIDH). The document was presented this Wednesday, November 2, by the Nicaraguan lawyer and executive secretary of CALIDH, Danny Ramírez-Ayérdiz.
The complaint is also against Francisco Diaz, director of the National Police; Ramón Avellán, deputy director of the Police; Néstor Moncada Lau, presidential adviser for security policies; Sonia Castro, former Minister of Health of Nicaragua; Fidel Moreno, secretary of the Mayor’s Office of Managua; Ramona Rodríguez, rector of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua) and Alba Luz Ramos, president of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ).
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“CALIDH considers that these officials are responsible for planning, directing and executing various conducts sanctioned by the crime against humanity established in Article 7 of the Rome Statute, within the framework of systematic and widespread attacks against the civilian population, since they committed the crimes of murder, extermination, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, forced disappearance of people, among others,” the organization said in a public statement.
Argentina’s federal justice is empowered to investigate these crimes based on article 118 of the Constitution, which recognizes the principle of universal jurisdiction, and the international commitments assumed by the country, as recently explained by experts in the field.
“Together with the complaint, CALIDH submitted to the Federal Court four reports that it has presented to different United Nations treaty monitoring bodies and rapporteurships of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights where it showed its deep concern about the situation of civil and political rights, rights of women, children and adolescents and freedom of association in the context of the socio-political crisis in Nicaragua”, explained the organization.
The organization also provided the Argentine judicial authority with a summary of the cases it is currently processing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in which the persons represented are victims of the crimes denounced in that South American court.
Judicial Ariel Lijo will judge both complaints
The judge who will hear the case is Ariel Lijo, the judge who will judge Ortega and his entourage for the same crimes, another complaint filed in early October of this year by lawyers Darío Richarte and Diego Pirota.
Federal Judge Lijo, who is handling the case against Ortega and his entourage, is a respected and prominent judge in Argentina. In his professional career, he has heard cases against high-ranking officials of the governments of Presidents Carlos Menem and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; he also investigated former Vice President Amado Boudou and former President Mauricio Macri.
Now it is his turn to investigate the accusation of crimes against humanity against Daniel Ortega, Rosario Murillo and 14 high-ranking officials of the Nicaraguan dictatorship. A report from Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) concluded that in the country co
