Writer and sociologist Oscar René Vargas, a former adviser to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who was captured by police 10 days agowas indicted Thursday for alleged crimes of “conspiracy” and “propagation of false news,” his relatives said.
René Zamora Vargas, son of another economist and political analyst, informed Associated Press that the initial hearing of the trial against his father was scheduled for December 9.
“My father is an intellectual. This accusation is part of the persecution of thought and intelligence” by the government of Daniel Ortega, he said.
The 76-year-old writer, who suffers from chronic illnesses and has a pacemaker, has been held in the El Chipote police jail since last November 22, when he was arrested in Managua while visiting a relative, his son recalled.
The Prosecutor’s Office charged him with the crimes of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity, provocation to commit rebellion and propagation of false news,” to the detriment of the Nicaraguan State, added Zamora Vargas, who rejected those accusations.
The Sandinista Front party, in power since 2007, “has been ruling out and persecuting people with critical and independent thinking,” added Vargas Zamora, who is a poet and left Nicaragua almost a year ago because he also felt threatened.
Vargas was an adviser to Ortega in the first Sandinista government (1979-1990). In 2007, after his return to power, he was appointed Nicaragua’s ambassador to France, but annulled the appointment after Vargas criticized the dismissal of three ministers in an interview and said that “thinking brings a lot of adversity.”
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (Cenidh), which defends Vargas, described the accusation as a “judicial farce” and demanded via Twitter the “immediate release” of the writer and “the cessation of repression” that is exercised through Power Judicial.
Oscar René Vargas was in exile in Costa Rica as a result of the 2018 social protests and his recent return to Nicaragua “surprised the family,” according to his son.
Author of 36 books and former professor, the economist had questioned before his arrest a report from a technical mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which positively assessed the projections of the Nicaraguan economy.
Since 2018, Nicaragua has been experiencing a serious crisis that, far from being resolved, worsened last November when Ortega, 77, was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term after having imprisoned his main political opponents. According to the opposition, there are currently more than 200 “political prisoners” in the country.
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